Blogging Has Been Light

Blogging's been light lately for a couple of reasons (and probably will continue to be for a while). School just started up at Unknown University and anyone in academia knows that the beginning of the semester is always crazy. In addition, I have THREE preps this fall (I typically have two preps, but one of the faculty went on sabbatical, and I got his class - a new prep).

Most important, I've come to the conclusion that I have to focus more on my research. I have a number of project that are "close" to completion, but it's better to have ONE completed and submitted than THREE that are "close". So, for the fall semester, I'm trying to work on only one project at at time until it (or at least my part of it) is done. I've tried to "juggle" projects in the past, but that ends up with me spinning my wheels. For me, multitasking just doesn't work.

To give you an idea as to what's on my plate:

• I just finished a paper to submit to the Eastern Finance Association annual meeting - it's a regional conference, but i go more often than not, since I have a lot of friends in the association. The deadline is today (in about an hour), but it's done and submitted. Now we let it sit for a week and then give it another go-round.
• Next on the line is a couple of days' work on a paper that's being presented at the FMA meeting in about a month's time. All I have to do is write up a short section of the lit review, so it should be done by Friday.
• Then I put in about a week's work on a third paper. I've done most of the empirical analysis except for one part. Once done, this goes to my coauthor who does the writeup.
• While I'm waiting for one or the other of these things to come back to me, I work on creating a data set for another paper.
  

Somewhere in there, I'll be juggling three separate classes. Interestingly enough, one is a "practicum" (the student-managed fund, one is a case class (advanced corporate finance), and the third is a straight lecture course (fixed income and credit markets). Since each class demands a different teaching style, this semester could get interesting (and possibly the beginning of a good case of multiple personality disorder).

In fact, I have some students who are taking all three classes with me, so we'll either end up on very good or very bad terms by December. Either way, it should be interesting.