For the Next X Number of Years

Friday night, my roommate L was marooned on a side of HarborCity that is hard to get home from by public transportation, but easy to get home from by car, so I took the car and my good friend who was over for dinner and we embarked to pick her up. Relatively easy driving in HarborCity means you might get there if you don't really care about seeing any road signs ever or having to deal with insane drivers.

My friend and I started having a heavy, deep, and real conversation about what I'm going to do with my life. Do I really like economics more than I like queer theory? Would there be a way to blend them? Would that way be martyrdom? How do I feel about that? Do I really want to be doing economics graduate school until I am in my thirties? What then?

The problem was that I was driving in the dark, and could only sort of answer all of these questions that she was so gently posing. I can also only sort of answer them when I'm not driving, it's brilliantly sunny and I'm sipping lemonade (yes, lemonade works like truth serum). I have mixed feelings about economics. Can the master's tools dismantle the master's house? What other tools do we have, especially in academia, don't we all use the master's tools sometimes? Every weapon is a tool if you hold it right, every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. I think I could hold it right. On the other hand I endured years at ELAC of being the outsider in my economics classes where the thing was talked about the most was the "profit maximizing firm", and I had amazing EconMentor, who taught me how to disagree with them and showed me the place I could have in that field, and believes in me. (Curse mentors who believe in you and push you to be your better self/academic).

I also have an unhealthy and large dose of self-doubt. I don't know if I can emotionally survive more years in an economics department dominated by men who are maximizing profit at every turn, often at the expense of people in their department. I also don't know if I can do the math.

But I do know that I like economics. The games that it makes you play with your brain have never grown stale for me. I also think that I could be a good teacher, and have interesting research. I also have accumulated some pretty specific human capital (come now, can you draw the Solow Model and explain it in spanish? I thought not). It seems like a waste to throw that away.

It is also the strongest and most flexible tool I have at my disposal, and getting a Phd in Economics does not mean that I have to end up somewhere like ELAC, I could end up somewhere like here So right now, I'm still driving in the dark toward a Phd in Economics. I'm not quite sure where I'm going, there are trickier intersections ahead, but I also haven't run right smack into anything yet.