Living in exile

As I look back over the year, I wonder what happened in my professional life. Did it just pass me by? So let me list them down:

• Co-organized the first mentoring workshop for female economists at the Asian Meeting of the Econometric Society
• Helped recruit new faculty members and got two who accepted offers
• Created and facilitated weekly PhD research workshops: gave two talks and was exposed to a lot of new material
• Made progress on the operations of the International Graduate Program: new brochure, pre-screening system for new applicants, promotional efforts, streamlining administrative procedures, setting up more relevant seminars and webinars
• Worked as part of the organizing committee of the Asian Meeting of the Econometric Society
• Finished a replication of a habit formation paper, but got rejected
• Wrote a paper on testing normality with a PhD student: easier to implement than Jarque-Bera, extensible to time series, no kernel smoothing needed under certain conditions
• Made progress on a root-selection algorithm that should be used in dynamic panel settings
• Cleaned up the writing on two co-authored papers: an R-package vignette and a fundamental pricing paper
• Was able to help a friend get their PhD and another friend get their permanent job
• Started work on causal inferences under non-normality
• Applied for a grant whose list of applicants have longer publication list than I do and failed
• Created new slides for an old teaching prep: still not happy with the results
• Wrote a lot of letters and emails; did a lot of small things here and there (somehow this never ends)
• Wrote two referee reports this year
• Gone through more than 50 international student applicants (even had Skype interviews with some of them) as part of admissions team

I think there should be more but a lot of the remaining are small things here and there meant to improve quality of life. But I did lose time on a lot of other things:

• I have not done a lot of work on my solo papers.
• I was not sufficiently updated with newest research, with some exceptions during January to March. The only time I really read the newest work is during recruiting season. Hell, I have never read as much normality and time series papers as any other point in my life. Funnily enough, these areas are not my areas at all.
• I have not cooked all the dishes I never tasted before. I bought spices here and there (especially those not available in China) but was not able to use all of them.
• I have not spent the time doing what they call self-care.

I traded focus and a bit of my own self for breadth. Is it worth it? Only time will tell.