You might know I’ve been a professor for over 30 years. Indeed, teaching, mentoring students, and fighting for policy based on better economic ideas has been the defining passion of my life.

But what you might not know is that I was a knife’s edge away from dropping out of college. As a freshman in 1977, I thought classes were a waste of time, far removed from the real world. The real world meant a full-time job at the nearby shipyard where my dad worked. Why put off a good-paying job to attend useless lectures?

I was all set to drop out at the end of the semester. But then one class—and one professor—showed me how academic ideas affected the world around me. Virtually overnight my life was set on a new path.