The Volokh Conspiracy wonders about whether or not law professors are any more or less miserable than those in any other profession. How do you know if you’re miserable, anyways?  just having a bad year? or that isn’t just another intellectual fad with a grain of truth?

1. “The first sign of a miserable job is anonymity, which is the feeling that employees get when they realize that their manager has little interest in them a human being and that they know little about their lives, their aspirations and their interests.”

2. “The second sign is irrelevance, which takes root when employees cannot see how their job makes a difference in the lives of others. Every employee needs to know that the work they do impacts someone’s life–a customer, a co-worker, even a supervisor–in one way or another.”

3.  “The third sign is something I call “immeasurement,” which is the inability of employees to assess for themselves their contribution or success. Employees who have no means of measuring how well they are doing on a given day or in a given week, must rely on the subjective opinions of others, usually their managers’, to gauge their progress or contribution.”

Those aren’t bad reasons for becoming unhappy at work.

There is a response here as to whether or not they’re valid, and whether or not they especially apply to law professors.

Here’s Nick Burns, your company’s computer guy.

Addition:  Update here.