My fall semester

As you've probably noticed, posts have already started slowing down and that's only going to continue. This will be an interesting fall. I'm taking a "full" course load, but the classes should be more laid back than in earlier semesters. The dissertation seminar will just be to prepare my dissertation proposal for later this year and learn the rules and regs. My labor class is going to be a seminar format, so just a lot of digging into papers and discussing them. That's a lot of work, but it's the sort of work that I personally take to much more easily than problem sets. Finally, the infometrics seminar is one that I'm looking forward to. I'll have to keep up with the readings because it's essentially an econometrics course with no problem sets (some labs). It's the one class I'll write a paper in, which maybe I'll talk about later in the semester (we have to write a grant proposal for the labor class).

Then of course I'm teaching history of economic thought. The first two days have gone well I think. A handful of kids are very interested in the subject. The rest maybe less so, but that's OK - there's always a distribution. It is a decent size class considering that I'm going to be grading essays without a TA.

Otherwise, more Sloan Foundation work all Fall (hopefully moving away a little bit from the immigration stuff, but I'm not the final decision maker on that point), finishing up a chapter on unemployment for another edited volume by Guinevere Nell, pulling together a draft on student visas and the transition to work for foreign students for the APPAM conference in November. I've got a couple other projects on the back burner that can take up any free time after all that.

Oh, and I should be meeting this little lady soon:

This was from last Monday. She is due the 21st. Time management is my big concern this fall. It's all doable, but with my priorities being baby as number one, my teaching as number two, that may leave precious little time left to juggle my own classes and the Sloan foundation work - both of which are pretty essential to do right.

I've got two short immigration pubs coming out very soon - I'll post on them as they come.