The content of apirchik's wonderful post got me thinking. I've been on FT pushing six years, and the "financial" benefits have been immense. Almost as valuable have been the nearly three years of moderating at FT (jeez, I can't believe next month is three years!).

I'm convinced the moderating exercise has made me less reactionary, as time passed. Maybe its partially been accelerating job demands, which have occasionally made moderating a time burden, but I believe I just have plain mellowed out. Threads that might have pushed my buttons two years ago, just cause me to shake my head and move on.

Can I tie this personality variance to other things, such as creeping age? Sure, but I'd like to attribute a lot of it to the continuing lesson in human behavior I've witnessed by posting and moderating here. This has been a great post-graduate class. I now am very hesitant to interrupt the many professors that are teaching at this universary of higher education :-: .