Long strings of time inspire questions that were thought to have been buried years ago. After 18 years in the American education system, on paper the preparations for entering the adult workforce have been more that than adequate.

Hearing of friends who rushed headlong into their first post-grad jobs—some eager, others less so—incites mixed feelings of self-doubt and thankfulness. The sensation that you’ve missed the first train and now everyone is going to be a year ahead combined with the opportunity to pause before jumping off the diving board yourself.

I imagine these contradictory sensations to be similar for those who took gap years mid-college. But neither is anyone is ahead nor behind—life’s pace is unique to one’s personal experience. I like to joke that by learning how to cook, clean, and organize now, I’m adding five years to the back end of my life; not a bad return on investment at all.

Thinking of life in terms of simultaneously exact and inexact terms such as “utility” and “roi” is a product of eight semesters of economics classes. In some ways, judging success in life in this way is objectively helpful: having four apples is better than possessing one orange. But if the process of consuming said apples results in a minor allergic reaction or inspires bad memories of childhood lunches, then maybe the orange isn’t so bad.

Economic indicators tethered to our own personal success are blind the emotional and psychological processes that dictate personal fulfillment and happiness. For example, utility-wise, taking four Harvard econ courses is generally considered to be of higher value than one English course. But it falls short by many qualitative measures; the English class may be taught by a New York Times editor invested in her students while the Econ classes taught by bumbling graduate students on hourly wages.

In a sense, economics is superb at describing the world and its functions with precise, concrete, and easily understandable terms. But is has little to do with creating and shaping the world permanently. Even when economics inspires changes—such as with mergers and acquisitions, venture capital funding, and central banking—these important processes are more associated with analyzing existing conditions and executing decisions based on economic signals.

The innovations and inventions that have done more than shift the needle have largely come from two different groups of people: Thinkers and Creators. The third category—Doers—consists of those who implement and perfect the ideas of the former two.

On average, economics tends to produce Doers: consultants, bankers, corporate executives, Federal Reserve analysts, CEOs, researchers, professors (even academics tend to analyze existing trends or synthesize the past to influence the future). More rarely does the economics field produce individuals who contribute to the leaps and bounds improving of society, in the same vein that great thinkers—the Plato’s, Mencius’, Schopenhauer’s—and creators—the Job’s, Tesla’s, Musk’s—do more than grease the wheels of modern society. They reinvent the wheels.

It’s a confusing combination of frustration and gratefulness to realize that you’ve graduated with a degree in a field that teaches you how do things but not so much how to create things. To be able to quickly and accurately break down problems into their component parts and analyze economic situations to synthesize various channels information in order to fuel better decision-making. To have a stable occupation waiting at the end of the tunnel. But to have little to do with creating products or designs as an engineer or CS major would or having a framework to create new worlds or better ones as and English lit or philosophy major might be equipped to do.

Far more hours were spent clicking away on Stata or typing problem sets than twirling a pencil while pondering life’s mysteries or manually prototyping new ideas. Creating—even business-related creating—remained outside the curriculum. One failure I will never forget was being tasked with creating a catchy name for a new business-to-business product offering a client was rolling out. After presenting a mediocre shortlist—the product of thesaurus searches and head scratching during team meetings—the HBS-educated contact at the company half-jokingly told us to “lock ourselves in a dorm room, smoke a bowl and try again.”

Faced with a seemingly simple task—two to three words strung together—we, I, failed. No algorithm would spit out Nike for shoes, or Tesla for cars; it had to come from within. Bowl or no bowl, an economics degree was no replacement for creativity.

So I shake my head now remembering this incident, this time as I struggle to create original lesson plans only to fall back on improving existing material created by past teachers. And wonder—Did I choose right or wrong?