Head Still Attached

You may recall my recent disastrous meeting with the advisor for my econ paper.

I did what any half-way smart person would do: I called my really smart friends. In fact, I bribed two of the biggest econ experts I know with beer (Beamish stout, quite drinkable given that the Pub was out of Guinness) and fried foods. In return, they would listen to me ramble on about the things I was thinking about in relation to bankruptcy and hedge funds and the like, and help me come up with a hook. Being friends of mine, they were quite susceptible to being bribed and were incredibly patient and pheonmenally helpful. And between the three of us, we came up with a hook.

Something it appears no one had yet started writing about. Which, of course, could mean either we were brilliant and creative, or it was such a bad idea no one had bothered.

After doing some more research and putting the idea for my topic down on paper, I went to a different professor to run it by him. If it passed the laugh test, I would proceed. If not, well, I knew where to get more beer.

But it passed, just. So I went back and did a little more tweaking and refining, threw in a little more economics jargon. Finally I gathered the scraps of my courage and went back to my advisor and, not trusting myself to ad lib it, read him my proposal. (I can't think of a more uncharacteristic action on my part, which goes to show how bizarre it is that I'm writing an econ paper.)

Anyway, out of the corner of my eye I could see him nodding and--I looked up--he was smiling. And he kept nodding and smiling as I was reading, and then he said it was a great topic. Turns out, he thought so because it was exactly the topic he was currently working on.

Well, what do you know.

I think he warned me in case I was planning to publish. But I wasn't, particularly. Mainly I want to get credit and not have to return the money. Because that would be crappy.

So I have a topic, and my advisor is enthusiastic, and I'm going to be working my behind right off to get this thing done.