9) (posted by a Bhuddist) You've been telling people, "I ended up where I should have been in the first place". What does that mean?

Yes, grasshopper, the wheel of academic life has turned full circle.

I figured out pretty quickly that an economics department wasn't the place for me, but I thought (hoped) that a public policy school would be a good fit. Having been employed by one and interviewed at several others, I'm pretty sure that's not right. In general, SPP seem dominated by economists who basically want to apply economic tools to applied problems. They really aren't any different than regular economists, at least in most cases. They want to publish in econ journals and be respected by other economists. In many (BUT NOT ALL) cases, they are more interested in running models on school data (for example) than in improving schools. They'll tell you that the two aren't mutually exclusive, but they don't know enough about the institutions and their personnel to actually provide information that could make a difference.

SPP also keep a fair number of political scientists on hand, but they either (1) student aggregate phenomena and/or (2) try to act like economists (or increasingly so).

That leaves a fair number of folks out in the cold--folks I need on my interdisciplinary teams. I used to think my former dean at GSU was a bit nutty when he said, "policy analysis is a sub-field of economics". He's not right, but he is more typical than I realized (at least initially).

So, here's hoping that the school of public health is the right home for me! I know there is a stronger ethos for actually helping people.