Boys of Summer

This is the time when you get to look heavenward and thank your stars you got to be an academic. The academic year has folded to a close, the campus has emptied out apart from graduate students, and the mind-numbingly boring elements of the profession such as grading, marking and attending examiners meetings are done and dusted for the time being. Three tantalising months of immersion in your reserach questions stretch ahead of you. You actually bound out of bed in the morning, looking forward to that exciting-looking paper you've set aside for reading, or the prospect of getting your econometric estimates to converge satisfactorily during the day. There are no appointments of any kind to annoy and distract, just the developing embryo of your next paper and you. You walk across campus for lunch, absent-mindedly observing the ducks while ruminating on the latest set of estimates. How do I fix that troublesome referee comment I can already see coming? Returning from lunch, a germ of an idea forms - why not try first-differencing the equations? Your steps quicken in light excitement and you can't wait to get back and see what those three extra lines of code might throw up. Certainly a time of the year when you wouldn't want to trade with any other profession!