I’m preparing to teach Econ 101 this fall for the first time since 2008. Reviewing textbooks and figuring out what to teach, I find myself right back in that moment. My understanding of what economics is seems to me as far away as it ever did from how we teach it and what it’s perceived as. I feel as tarred and feathered by the field as I ever did.

At that time in 2008, the financial crisis was revving up and I was working out my concept of economics and what I could possibly make of it. I was writing a lot in an anonymous blog, to organize my thoughts, work out my differences of opinion with the field, procrastinate from more mundane work, and figure out what I thought an economist was. The problem was that I was allegedly in the process of becoming an economist, but I didn’t really see myself reflected in what that seemed to mean.

I guess I still don’t. Since I find myself revisiting similar thoughts now, I decided to unseal that part of my record and merge all of those old writings here. So it’s all now in the archives on this site, which you can get to through the widget on the right (the old site is still up at this link). I’m sure there are plenty of things that I wouldn’t write again in retrospect. But I want to be honest about how that process went for me, and how it still goes.

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