Urban Onramps

“Whatever you do, don’t start a blog.”

Greg Mankiw’s advice for new junior law school faculty is pretty interesting. Plenty applies to other fields and walks of life. A sample:

Attend conferences and give seminars at schools to publicize your work and yourself. The people in the audience may one day be in a position to hire you or write letters of evaluation about you.

This goes for any field. Treat everyone well, like the Bible says we should. You never know where that person will be in five years. Or where you will be. You treat people well, you do good work, and in their time of need or opportunity, they will remember you. They will also remember if you were a nice/decent person, how combative you are/were, and other not frivolous details. Think: Long Game.

Then there’s this:

Whatever you do, do not start a blog. That will only establish your lack of seriousness as a scholar.

Ha! There are other reasons to be careful about starting a blog. Chief among them is that you need to understand the speed, power, and long memory of the internet. The stuff you post will come back to help or hurt you, but it won’t be neutral.

posted Feb 26, 2007, 8:28am by Rodolpho Carrasco