Many of us who care to know are aware that economics professor Ralph Byrns is leaving the University at the close of the school year.
As a bright-eyed student, it is easy to feel jilted by Byrns’ decision to move. All the same, we should rest assured in the fact many of us already live in tandem with the lessons professor Byrns offers us through his advice and his anecdotes.
Sure, we will not have a faculty member who can fill Byrns’ place. No one will have the same catalog of stories, life experiences dotting the map of universities across the United States and a gravelly yet affable persona that endear Byrns to so many of his students. But anyone who is as willing to give of him or herself as Byrns gave to this University follows his admirable example.
I served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for two sections of Byrns’ ECON 101 classes. Fortunately, he paired his TAs so each pair could share the feeling of self-consciousness in front of a dozen and a half recitation students who expect you to help them better understand economics.
In those breakout sessions, I shot from the hip, much as Byrns is wont to do (he showed the crowd his two lines of notes as he began giving the Carolina Chiron Award lecture last week). I tried to use relatable stories to help reinforce any number of economic principles, though a 19-year-old’s experiences surely paled to the adventures Byrns has undertaken.
The one thing that made the recitations worthwhile was a full commitment — the effort of the two TAs to plan a productive recitation, the effort of the students to bring an open and inquisitive mind to the classroom and the individual interaction after class or through email to make sure every student who wanted to understand something would ultimately understand it.
That effort matched Byrns’ willingness to serve his students. Byrns has always been hard to miss on the steps of Gardner Hall. Once you approached him with a question or a simple “hello,” it was hard to walk away without him having offered bits of advice and direction. He advised the Economics Club, organized help sessions for his economics students and gave an annual lecture on the economics of finding true love. I even saw him once on Student Television, playing the role of a Pit preacher. “Sure,” I thought; “of course he, of all people, would sign up to play a Pit preacher.”
All this background made it unsurprising to see Byrns as he was at the Chiron Award lecture. Rather than follow the strictures of an outline, he weaved his way through reminiscences, experiments and questions to impart to us what he felt were sincere, albeit corny, pieces of advice. Value is more than simple substance; it is something that comes from the human heart. Form creates value, but should not be embraced any more than necessary, because it leads to worrying, cheating and other ills. What truly matters, then, is substance — our friends, love, generosity and truthfulness.
For a man steeped in theory, Byrns’ lasting observations are incredibly accessible. We should all strive toward these by being decent people, but many of us are already exemplars of what Byrns hopes to see in us.
