"The picture of grad student life portrayed here [in Colander's book] is one of stress, worry, and resignation, with many students saying that they love their Ph.D. program, love the subject, and, as they progress, love 'doing economics,' but expressing general unhappiness. As one former colleague said about a student, however, 'He smiles too much for a graduate student.' That students are stressed is part of life - we know that people who work more and whose shadow price of time is higher report experiencing more stress (Hamermesh and Lee 2007). So what? The purpose of graduate school in economics is not create happy people - it is to educate (not just train) future scholars who are able to model the incentives underlying social phenomena and to examine the empirical aspects of incentive-based behavior. If making grad students happier would contribute to this goal, fine; if not, there are more important issues to worry about here.The review is full of Hamermesh giving his insightful opinions, like this. Hamermesh is, I think, himself one of those rare breed economists - he's a workaholic, passionate, creative, full of questions and motivated to answer them. He's an old man now, but continues to crank out interesting work in labor economics, and seems to have the heart of a young man.
One interviewee answered Colander's question, 'How many hours a week do you work?' by 'All the time. Doing economics is the default option.' I was surprised that most students responded differently. Any grad student (or junior faculty member) for whom this is not true is unlikely to succeed in the program (or as a researcher). For the overwhelming majority of highly productive economists, doing economic research is all-consuming, even though they may give the impression of being relaxed about it. If it were not, they would quickly enter one of the absorbing states of consulting, administration or, most likely, on-the-job retirement.
I think I know what he's talking about in this article, too. The other day, I was telling an old friend about my new job, and she said, "You seem like you have a happy life," and for several days I've not known how to respond. No one has said that to me, and I'm not sure what it means for me exactly. I turn the idea of happiness and my job over and over, and I wonder if happiness can exist with this kind of stress - this kind of panic and worry and frustration. But, walking out of my office the other day, I thought about a colleague who left the department for a lucrative job in consulting (lucrative I'm telling you), and I wondered if I could do it. Of course I could do it, but I wondered if I could actually be happy outside of this place, doing this work, and then I wondered if I'm happiest when I'm this miserable. As weird as that even sounds, I think I am actually the happiest I am in the whole world, in my whole life even, when I'm doing economics, thinking about economics, writing papers, working on some problem, even though it absolutely leaves me feeling lonely and exhausted. At the least, I think I know, without boasting, that it means I'm a good fit for this profession, since Hamermesh confirms that that is actually something the more productive people in this profession feel. He writes later in the review,
Students were asked to speculate about the correlation of success in the [microeconomics] core [courses] and success in the PhD program. Most note that, with a few exceptions, success in the core is not a great predictor of eventual success in the program (presumably in producing a top-notch dissertation). Most senior economists would go further and say that success in the core is positively, but weakly, correlated with eventual success in the profession (measured by the quality/quantity of scholarly research). At my own graduate school, many of those who were hailed as stars based on their performances in coursework and comprehensive exams had not been among the stellar producers and others, who were viewed as decent students, have done very well professionally. Creativity -- the toughest (impossible?) skill to teach -- and motivation are the biggest determinants of success as a professional economist, conditional, of course, on some modicum of education and ability.Hah! It's too soon to say, as I'm a first year junior faculty, but I can say that I was a big fizzle in my core courses. Out of approximately 14 students, I ranked maybe 11 or 12 in terms of grades and problem set performance. But, I think I got in the top quartile on the microeconomics preliminary exam (the knife-edge walk that eliminated over half my class), because for six weeks, I didn't sleep, I didn't eat - I just worked and reworked problem sets. And then, just as soon as I took the test - feeling for the first time in 12 months that I may have actually aced a test - I forgot it all. All of it. I now teach graduate microeconomics, and I'm constantly having to reteach this stuff. Nevertheless, my performance was never impressive, but I managed to hit a dissertation topic that was fascinating to me, existentially important even, and got out in five years.
But, it's funny how it all feels like it started over the second I became junior faculty at a research university. The first year as a junior faculty feels like the first year as a graduate student. In some ways worse, because the stakes are even higher than before! But, I think about Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet a lot, and think it has relevance for this job. Rilke, at one point, tells the young poet to imagine himself in a cell, alone, without his pencil and paper, and thus unable to write poetry. If he can imagine that existence, and not want to die, then he is not meant to be a poet. I quit writing poetry when I read that, oddly enough. But now that I'm an economist, I feel like it actually describes me. If someone said you couldn't "do economics" anymore, I would just wither up and die. Isn't that sick? Only to another economist does that, I think, really not sound stupid and geek, but to me, economics is poetry - it is pure bliss, pure ecstasy. It is, to me, the key to unlock every secret in life. But "doing" it - that is where the real pleasure is for me.
Ah well, enough autobiography. The book sounds good, and Hamermesh's review is great, too. I encourage you to google it and find an old ungated copy.
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