You can tell a lot about a profession by the fantasies of its members. Academics, I have found, secretly want to be freelance magazine writers. For a long time, while I worked on my doctorate in English, I suspected as much. But once I became a journalist myself, I attracted sotto voce confessions. They want my job.

Does this mean they want the financial risk, the rejection, and the uncertainties of the market? Of course not. They do, however, want the romance of writing, the freedom of freelancing. Some of my friends from graduate school, now safe in tenure-track jobs, tell me they wish they knew how to write, because they want their ideas consumed out of love, not obligation, and they want their research to matter in the world. I understand that perfectly well. That's why I do what I do.

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