I've been MIA the last few weeks while getting a paper done for a conference and largely just trying to keep my head above water with classes. But spring break is this week and I'm hoping to catch up a bit. One of the great ironies of academic life is that we have all this flexibility so non-academics often look at our schedules and may envy all the vacation and 'free time' that we get. But the reality is that to be a successful academic, you have to have the self-discipline to manage all that 'free time', and many academics I know work many more hours than people with more typical 9-to-5 jobs. It's also a job that's really hard to 'leave at the office', so even when I'm not technically working, I'm often thinking about work-related stuff. All of which is to say, I'm very bad at taking vacations. If I don't have specific things planned, I tend to default into doing work. This is not necessarily a bad thing - I see it as an indica...
Observations and ramblings of an economist with a passion for teaching...