Price of Faith

I know, I know. What is the heretic economist doing by putting a monetary value on a spiritual idea. Yada yada yada . . .

Well, I bought my plane ticket to New Orleans. This year, New Orleans is hosting the AEA conference, which is the annual "job market". The job market is where all potential employers and employees gather and interview. Those interviews help hiring committees decide who to invite for a "fly-out" (read longer interview). Why is this a test of my faith? I only have one solid interview to this date. It would be a waste of time and money to fly out to New Orleans for one interview. But I bought my ticket and am hoping now that, after the display of faith, I get a few more interviews.

So, in total, I applied to about 40 schools for jobs this year. This doesn't include government of private sector jobs. I was pretty selective about who received my application. Some class mates of mine were not as selective and sent out upwards of 150 applications. Given that I am graduating from UCI, there are quite a few institutions that are "out of my league" and I am okay with that. I knew this would be a constraint coming into grad school. Fat chance of an average joe like me getting a job at Harvard (or if you're from Boston, it's Ha-vad). Of the 40, I would be happy to interview with 15, fly out to 6 and have offers from 2. Will that happen? Probably not. What will happen? I have no idea.

The gardener has been really supportive of the whole job process. She googles locations and tells me about house prices, crime statistics and all that jazz. I think that we are just ready to move from Irvine. It's been great, but it is getting old in our apartment and it's time to move on.

By the way, my faith costs me about $451 on United. And that was the cheapest faith I could find.