I went to grad school at GMU, spending nearly nine years in Northern Virginia outside DC. It is a very different place than Pennsylvania, whether you are from the city or “the woods”. My terminal year the American Economics Association meeting was in Philadelphia, so I and every other job hunting academic economist swarmed to the City of Brotherly Love the first weekend of January like salmon swimming upstream for their terminal year, bracing for multiple days of interviews1. My family went with me and stayed in north Philly with my wife’s parents while I drove to center city and got a hotel. That turned out to be a great move because it snowed some 6” the first night and driving down took forever; the fact PA gets snow always seems to take Philly by surprise.
Anyway, early the second morning I was slipping in my dress shoes down the sidewalk covered in ankle deep snow and stopped in a little coffee bar inside the front of the convention hall. Standing in a line that went outside, I got involved in a conversation with some locals wondering what the hell all these youngin’s in suits were doing around here this time in the morning. We had a nice chat, and as I entered the building I thought to myself “Wow, people here are really nice.”
A few seconds later I stopped dead and remembered where I was. Where the hell had I been living such that Philadelphians struck me as super nice? Oh, right, just outside Washington, DC, land of “the people who matter,” according to one health insurance ad in the DC metro.
Shortly after hitting “publish” on yesterday’s Lewis piece, I popped out 1984 and started rereading it. It’s been a while, probably ten years, since the last time I reread it. It was comforting, and relaxing in a way that made me stop a few chapters in and think “I am reading a story about a guy who expects to be vaporized for writing a diary… why the hell is THIS comforting?” I think the answer is a combination of it being familiar, and seeing someone who gets it, and has it somewhat worse than we do.
Familiar in the sense that I have read the book many times and recognize Winston and O’Brian, the decaying London, the telescreen etc. but also familiar in the sense of “Yea, that sounds about right these days.” Seeing the over the top reaction to bland editorials suggesting “Hey, maybe more open discussion is a good idea?” one can easily imagine the lack of Two Minutes Hate is largely due to people working remotely. Seeing “This video has been removed” notifications on YouTube reminds one that discussion being “memory holed” because it does not fit the official story is already here. College law professors terrified of broaching topics once blasé but now deemed wrong-think, lest their students turn them in for unorthodoxy would be familiar to Winston. Even suggesting that the accused deserve representation gets you demonized. We all adopt a blank face when forced to go through “training” to avoid losing our jobs for objecting to the mandatory beliefs of the week, just like when facing towards the telescreen.
But hey, at least we don’t have to drink Victory Gin before getting tortured by rats!
The economics graduate job market is strange. Very structured, all the jobs come out within a few months in the fall, you apply to them and then 90% of your interviews will be at AEA the first weekend in January, with generally everyone getting offers by March.