Blog reading and career choosing

Here are the relevant personal facts for measuring whether I am well-suited for graduate study in economics according to Tyler Cowen. (Read his advice.)

• My interests are broad, but not all are equal. I never considered being a linguist or photographer just because I like Language Log and Chromasia. But maybe, as TC is suggesting, breadth of interest itself hinders graduate-level study. If so, uh-oh.
• I haven’t taken the math GRE, but I imagine I’d do well. The trouble is that I only have a knack for math–not a real talent.
• Getting into a Top Ten school would not be easy. No professor could attest to my promising individual research. There is none. (Graduate school ranking is more important for an economist seeking a job than it is for, say, a mathematician.)
• The idea of being a professor of middling talent saddens me. Just teaching undergraduates isn’t appealing either.
• I’ll follow TC in presuming my chances of being a Type-3 underdog economist are slim.

Instead of an economist, Prof. Cowen suggests being a legal academic.

You will have a greater chance to work with ideas and concepts. A greater chance to write books and also to read them. You are more likely to strut, wear three-piece suits, and speak in stentorian tones.

All of these things are appealing. I already had loose plans to take some LSAT prep classes when I get back to the US. In fact, I received face-to-face law school advice a few months ago from the University of Texas’s own Brian Leiter (of blog, rankings, and book fame–I am good at choosing career advisors, aren’t I?) But that was advice about a career in law more generally. If I’m going to be a legal academic I should put Volokh back on my reading list, and dip my feet into Legal Theory Blog.

(Or should I? It seems blog reading has less value than I thought–at least as an aid to career picking. I should be reading more books relative to blogs. But that’s not such a hard truth. The harder one is that total reading time could be increased.)

The fun advice comes at the end of his post. My happiness is more dependent on love and sex than it is on a career. That sounds true to me.

Current plan: I’m going to law school.

Thanks to Tyler Cowen for the great advice!