How Freaked Out You Should be About a Recession, According to a Nobel Prize Winning Economist by Julia Glum Where were you during the Great Recession of 2007-2009? I spent most of it in 10th grade. Being 15 years old, I was a lot more concerned with whether I was going to pass AP World History (I did) and what to wear to the homecoming dance than the subprime mortgage crisis or Lehman Brothers. The recession was on my radar, but only vaguely so.