Oh gee, one more comment (and deep apologies for three in one day): Another interesting phenomenon that I think DOES take place in graduate school is that students can find themselves synthesizing elements in different professors' outlook in a way that neither professor would have imagined. I know this happened to my generation of early Americanists -- what started out as a search for "which was the correct model of early America -- tenancy or home ownership; capitalism or traditional nonmarket mentalites" turned into the realization that there was stunning diversity throughout early America. What had been intense battles among our mentors was, for us, different pieces of the same puzzle. Having been a grd student in econ at TWO different universities (and also discussed interpretations with my spouse, who shows the mark of his own graduate institution), I have longf been fascinated by the way economists all insist on graduate students taking two semesters of Grad macro theory and Grad micro theory -- and it can be a wildly different course. Furthermore, while I think you can point to a few "schools" of economics that teach "their" systems, or professors who teach their textbooks -- the schools that both my husband and I were associated with included professors who made what I would call an honorable effort to introduce us to the breadth of economic analysis, even while acknowledging what they found most usable or persuasive. So I found myself automatically incorporating bits and pieces of, say, Friedman, neo-Keynesianism, and rational expectations -- even if they were supposed to be arch-enemies. I wonder how many of you out there had similar experiences. That would mean that NOT ONLY is the ADVISOR important, but also perhaps the interaction of ideas at that point in time, including those the advisor detested. -- Mary Schweitzer, Dept. of History, Villanova University (on leave 1995-96) (last posting on subject, I promise) [log in to unmask]