Every now and then, I get discouraged when I hear about how much of a rat-race we can expect academia to be, being a never-ending status game of trying to climb to the top of a very competitive hierarchy. After working many years to earn top grades to get into a top school to get a top placement so you can working 70+ hours a week to try to get a publication in a top journal so you can hope against hope to get nominated for tenure... Any slip along the way and it seems you could just end up being a sad, but soon forgotten casualty in the long march towards attempted academic success. I am often left asking myself if the prize at the end of this ladder is worth it all?Greg Mankiw has a great post with his thoughts on this topic, proving yet again why he is quickly becoming one of my favorite contemporary economists. (And no, I'm not just saying that because he once linked to my blog, although that didn't hurt...)
Emphasis mine:
Uh-oh -- I worked as an engineer for for a little over 10 years before returning to school. According to Moffatt, it looks like I may be ruined goods...
Mike Moffatt considers the question:"What real world experiences should I have to be a good academic economist?"He answers:I'd say none. Academia, by necessity, is about focusing your concentrations on very isolated and unique problems. I've noticed the people who succeed in graduate school tend to have fewer outside interests to distract them from their focus, not more.A lot of economics professors I know would agree with this answer. Indeed, I have heard similar advice given many times. But I am inclined toward a different judgment.
It all comes down to the definition of "good academic economist." If your goal is to maximize the probability of winning a Nobel prize, or at least to climb up as high as you can on citation rankings, then this advice is correct. Real world experiences and outside interests are a distraction. Don't take time off from academic pursuits for a job in public policy. Don't ever work on Wall Street or do any consulting. Don't engage in the broader societal debate by writing op-eds or working on political campaigns. All of that takes time away from getting papers published in academic journals.
But don't stop there. If you have this objective, then it is best not to have hobbies, or read novels, or go to the movies. Don't spend time teaching well or mentoring students, except the very best students who can help you with your research. Don't get married or have friends, unless your spouse and friends are PhD economists and can coauthor papers with you. Whatever you do, don't have children--boy, are they a time sink! And if you make the mistake of having children, make sure you spend as little time with them as you can.
In other words, if you want to be the best academic you can be, get ready to be a miserable human being.
Alternatively, you might decide that, at the end of your life, Saint Peter will not judge you solely by checking the Social Science Citation Index. If so, maybe you should make life choices using a broader objective function--one that encourages you to sacrifice some degree of academic success narrowly construed for a more diverse, more satisfying, and more noble life.
It's amazing to me how few academic economists I hear talking in economic terms when they give career advice. Economists of all people should know that there are trade-offs in everything, including in quality of life and career advancement. It's refreshing to see a top economist like Mankiw talking in these terms.
Since I'm already off to a less traditional start, what are my current strategies? Trying to focus on my (and GMU's) comparative advantages and leverage them to maximum effect, considering the dual JD/PhD program to both expand my knowledge base and career options, getting realistic expectations for my future career prospects coming out of GMU, reminding myself that my prospects still might not have been that great had I gone to a higher-ranked university (only a fraction of those students succeed in a big way), maintaining optimism that there maybe unexpected benefits and opportunities along the road less traveled, planning on working hard to become a reading and writing machine (getting as much published as possible), and nurturing my love and fascination of economics as an end in and of itself.
Two big motivators for me coming back to study economics were a lifelong desire to teach and a broken heart from seeing much poverty around the world during my travels. If I can eventually land a job as a college professor and work on research and/or consulting on economic development issues, these two goals will have been realized. I want to maximize both of these goals, but if that means I fall short of the Nobel Prize or teaching at Harvard or Chicago (or even GMU), it still doesn't sound like a bad life to me.
In addition, I plan on including many more goals into my lifetime objective function than only academic success. Call me crazy, but I take great joy in my relationships (family and friends), my faith, traveling (7 continents, 29 countries, and 50 states so far), working on (and hopefully one day influencing) economic development issues, teaching, etc. Lord willing, I hope and strive for academic and financial success along the way, but I wonder what's wrong with aiming to also live a good a happy life? It seems to me that academia should be a means towards these ends (and it does have great potential towards accomplishing both goals), but seems it can become distorted when it becomes the sole objective in life.
Or maybe I'm just bitter I didn't get into Chicago or Harvard...
DISCLAIMER: By not being in a top 10 school myself, I am apparently already handicapped for life in my academic pursuits. Looking at what would be expected of me had I gone to a top 10 school, perhaps this is a blessing?
No comments:
Post a Comment