I went to Egypt for the summer to learn arabic in a two month intensive course. But what is that actually worth? We could look at the empirical value, it cost me about £800 to study, live, tour and explore Egypt. But then that doesn't really account for how much it was worth to me. Say for example, it is worth much more to me than the simple empirical sum, because I enjoy arabic and love exploring new countries much more than £800.
So how to attach a value to this trip then? let continue with the price route: So, the fact that I spent £800 on the trip tells us what? It tells us that this trip was more valuable to me than say spending it on a holiday in France...or buying a new Laptop...or the other millions of things I could do with £800. so thats it: the opportunities I foregoed to go to Egypt is the implicit cost of the trip to Egypt to me.
This opportunity cost can apply to a variety of different things such as time...the time i spent in Egypt is much more valuable to me there than anywhere else....because I spent it there.
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5 comments:
I had been wondering how your trip had gone. I suppose that like you said you cannot put a price as such on something that you love. Even if we're talking money £800 doesn't seem to bad at all actually.
It's good to see that you had a good time, though :-) .
Just out of interest how did the learning of Arabic go? I can imagine that it would be quite difficult.
Thanks for the comment, my arabic learning went very well. The arabic teaching was all in arabic, so it improved my understanding and speaking no end. And basically I can talk about and understand most topics that crop up in everyday conversation. But the good thing is now I have enough of a platform to take my arabic learning to the newxt level on my own, and inshAllah (translation: God willing) I want to return to Egypt in either the winter or the summer or both.
You obviously took quite an intense course in the summer. At least it has paid off, though.
Oh and well done on the GCSE Results, I heard about how well you did!
Salaam brother. Have you considered the cost benefit route of analysing the true value of your trip? (Maash-Allah, good to hear you went to study Arabic for Quranic purposes). opportunity cost is key, you wouldnt spend £800 if you valued a laptop relatively more highly, but there was also the external costs involved, which should account for the value you place, ie: environmental impacts of air transport (unless foot/cycle/bus/train was your method of transport). what do you think?
salaam brother, well if you take the islamic economic point of view, then ofcourse ilm is priceless, and you have that story of how one of the tabieen, newly-wed, went away for jihad leaving a box full of gold and came back after 20 odd years and found that his wife had spent the entire box on his sons education and who had become a famous scholar of madinah.
if you take the more traditional meaning, then inshAllah i stand to benefit in the future as this arabic will enable me to study fiqh, (including fiqh ul muamalaat). and this should prove to be a very useful tool in the booming islamic financial market both in the west and the middle and far-east. looking even narrower to that, i stand to gain as the more languages you know obviously the more marketable you are, and with university appllications coming up, this kind of experiance could be key.
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