Often, an academic writer is trying to fill a niche. Now, the niches are getting smaller. Academics may write for large audiences on their blogs or as journalists. But when it comes to their academic writing, and to the research that underpins it—to the main activities, in other words, of academic life—they have no choice but to aim for very small targets. Writing a first book, you may have in mind particular professors on a tenure committee; miss that mark and you may not have a job.
Category: Life
Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl ?
The boy’s coaches, and later his parents, ran onto the field. Smelling salts wouldn’t revive him. Eventually, an ambulance appeared. Sean was convinced that he’d killed the boy. He began to cry. But what Sean remembers most vividly was the way, right after the tackle, his teammates kept slapping his helmet, as if he’d just done the most heroic thing ever, which, in a purely football sense, he had.
We Don’t Work Too Much But We Spend Too Much Time at Work
For many professionals it seems, Sunday is less a “day off” than it is to do similar things as you might do while “at work” but without the infrastructure and bureaucracy of being “on the job.”
The Prophet
To his listeners, Ramsey holds out the promise that they can simply choose to be different—that it’s within their power to not take part in recessions and the economic problems facing American families. “Debt is normal,” a Ramsey bumper sticker says. “Be weird.”
My Time at Lehman
I remember taking the subway home each night asking myself “What have I done today? What have I created?” And it meant that I couldn’t sleep well, I was embarrassed to tell people what I did, and I felt as though I personally owed every single person that I mucked over in the markets each day. The experience reminded me of one as a child when I unfairly sold some worthless items to neighbors at a stoop sale in front of our house in Brooklyn. When my parents found out that night, they made me go from home to home on our block returning the money.
