Steve, living that grad student life.

I caught up with Steve Capone right before he embarked on a marathon grading session.  Steve is in the midst of finishing his coursework in the Philosophy Ph.D. program at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City) and we spent a few minutes commiserating about grading.  But  it turns out that the life of the mind–at least in the Rocky Mountains–has  some pretty great perks.  Aside from his academic pursuits, Steve skis and snowboards.  He has a season pass at Snowbird, and was planning on getting out to The Canyons Resort the day after we spoke.

“I’ve been so busy with work that I’ve probably been out there only ten days,” Steve told me.  It’s the kind of complaint that would roil the blood of any skier locked in the frigid flatness of the nation’s midsection (read, any MAPHer past or present suffering through the useless cold early spring weather).

Steve graduated from MAPH in 2007 and spent a year in his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.  Asked to describe his gap year, Steve recalled, “I managed a bookstore and prayed that I got into a Ph.D. Program.”  Things worked out, and he is now on track to finish and defend his comprehensive paper (which Utah does in lieu of an orals exams) in the Fall.  For this paper, Steve is working on a critique of luck egalitarianism.  Though he is also working on a project related to the popular scholarship of Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein (authors of Nudge), we spent the bulk of our conversation talking about luck egalitarianism, and its various critiques. Continue reading →