I love academia!

My lack of posting since I've been back in school can be chalked up to one of two things: I'm very busy or I'm very lazy. Sorry, make that three: a combination of both. I've never considered myself to be incredibly energetic so I'm going to call the third option.

Along with school, I'm TA'ing a course in microeconomics and flogging gore-tex and whatnot at a local outdoors shop that an old friend of mine bought while I was away in China. Both jobs are much more fun than studying.

I really like giving tutorials to these first year students because they (like most people) are intimidated by economics. Surprise, surprise, economists are great at describing things in such a way that only other economists can really decipher what they are talking about. Could it be that their professors and career academics have spent most of their careers and adult lives in academia conversing mostly with other economists? Maybe. Or could it be that, like many professors, teaching is a secondary concern? Again, I'm going with a combination of both. It's a big jump going from a commerce degree, where many of my professors were or had been professionals and had some experience in dealing with the public at large to a program with a group of professors who are even more socially inept than I am (one or two exceptions of course). Is it that obvious I've become a bit disillusioned with my field and my program?

Back to the point, tutorials. Explaining these concepts to the students in such a way that they can understand and demystifying economics feels good. Most of the students who come to my sessions seem to leave with a better understanding of the concepts that have been taught (I use that word loosely) in the class sessions. Now really, there shouldn't be a need for me at all, if the professors explained things in a way that most people will understand or wrote the text in a similar manner, the students could spend their tutorial time doing something much more productive, like reading (again, used loosely) Maxim or Cosmo.

It all comes back to a professor's commitment to teaching. Ideally, all university professors should have this strong commitment but the reality of the situation is that many (the majority in some fields) don't. They simply finish their PhD and want to continue to do research. I'm of the opinion that in most fields, a Masters degree is sufficient to teach first and second year courses. A policy like this might attract a broader range of applicants for teaching positions and people who are more interested in the actual teaching than research. Oh, and drop the pressure on publishing articles in journals, how exactly that improves the learning environment I've never been able to understand. Save those disinterested, boring academics for later years and graduate studies when the students have developed a strong interest in and understanding of the subject matter.

If only university administrators were as smart as me.