Lashing Oneself to the Mast.

  With the inspiring image of Dean Kagan shuffling through Whole Foods in my mind, I can now return to my own quotidian drudgery with renewed enthusiasm.  And, although I don't happen to be at the helm of one of the world's great law schools at the moment, I have added a new source of pressure to my own schedule: a belated effort at self-improvement.  There's nothing like a debut year of academic conferences, workshops, and presentations among the genuinely learned to embarrass new professors with the gaping lacunae in their knowledge.

  So, starting with my own area of corporate and securities law, I've attempted to compile a canon of the seminal books, law review articles, and other sources that a doctor of philosophy might have digested through serious professional training.  Happily, this very blog has done great work on this front, and Professor Robert Thompson of Vanderbilt conducts an annual survey of the top ten corporate and securities law review articles.  Of course, SSRN also deposits a deluge of new pieces into my inbox regularly as well.  So, there is no shortage of ways to improve my specific knowledge of this field (perhaps just time in which to do it).

  More broadly, there is also the duty as a professor to improve one's general knowledge.  Daily newspapers and regular periodicals are a wonderful way to taint whatever moments of discretionary time remain unpolluted in your schedule.  But surely no one who is a member of the academy should fail to have read Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and the other geniuses of the human condition.  So I have tried to compile a list of those kinds of things as well.

  Of course, drafting lists and then organizing lists of lists doesn't actually accomplish very much.  But I am looking forward to adopting at least one habit of -- dare I say it -- highly effective people: listening to audio books.  I have signed up for an Audible.com account, purchased an iPod, and downloaded The Odyssey.  While standing on the el platform, shuffling through the cafeteria queue, and putting petrol in my car, I look forward to hearing ennobling snippets from the great bard.  And at this pace, I should reach civilization in about the same number of years as Odysseus.