Academic passions

Over the past few years I've had a number of academic passions. The first big one was post-Communist Hungarian nationalism. Then came the modern Caucasus. Then Gypsies. That was followed by interwar Estonian politics. Which was succeeded by Russian energy policies. My most recent passion - risk assessment procedures under the SPS Agreement in the WTO.

I stumble across academic passions by chance - a fortuitous encounter and I'm hooked. It's like love. Doing research becomes something exciting. Like any relationship, there are down moments. Sometimes my research doesn't progress well, gets tedious and boring. But always, I know that I'll discover something new that will respark my love. All of the aforementioned topics are still very very close to me.

If I've learned anything in all these years in school, it's that I can't write a good paper if I'm not passionate about the topic. So while the next month will be a hellish frenzy of research, hopefully the results will be worth it.