Testmaster - oh yes, you are the MASTER
In what can only be described as a quarter life crisis, I’ve decided to give the LSAT’s a shot. Why? I’m not completely sure. A few reasons I guess…
1 - Plan B What I’m going right now is completely uncharted ground for not only myself, but my family as well…. no one has tried to get a job in the high tech business on the development/management end…. and if I continue to be an engineer that’s the direction I would want to head. How to get there is fairly unclear to me, I’m sure staying and getting my PhD. would be a good step, along with some business whatever and what not. But who knows… I’m not loving what I’m doing right now, and if it turns out I’m not cut out for industry or it eventually doesn’t appeal to me, I’m sort of up shit’s creek because I’m not really interested in being an academic engineer, and I would want a spot at a school like Brown or Columbia rather than a monster like Berkeley or MIT or some 3rd rate place like Tufts…… and I mean Tufts is hard to get a job at. Berkeley and MIT are harder to get positions at then the smaller engineering schools, but I rather work more closely with students if I was going to go the academic route.
But Academics isn’t that high on my list anyway, so assuming I can do the industry thing, this brings me to
2 - Location If you’re an engineer in NY, where do you work? Upstate, that’s where. Albany. Troy. Schenectady. Rochester. Perhaps on Long Island, certainly not the city. I like cities. I could stay out here, but chances are I’d work in San Jose, which would suck as well. San Diego is up and coming.
And then there’s the rest of the country. I don’t really fathom living in a non costal state. Maybe Seattle will be nice, and there’s always Vancouver, Canada, I like it a lot up there. So engineering isn’t that limited when it comes to location, but the type of engineering job is. Engineers, even at management level, have to move often. Do I want to do that?
3 - Interest I’ve always been interested in politics and analytical problems, which can be scientific problems or policy problems. Over the past year, I’ve been an engineer, and a hardcore one at that. At Brown, I always had 3 science courses a semester, but I always had that one poli sci course to mix it up. Being that I want to mix this up with business, will that be enough range for me…. I know I can;’t be a career engineer right now, I need to utilize more right brain than that…..
4 - Dying Faith In Technology I used to have this naive notion that technology just provides the tools, and man alone must use those for good or evil or whatever. You can look at it that way, and the modern research system is based on that utterly and completely (oh you may hear grumblings on stem cell research, but those opponents are for making deadlier bullets so fuck them), so when things like chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, pollution and whatever come out its impossible to point the blame, and more importantly, its impossible to figure out a way to prevent another occurrence. Most of today’s technology is synergized, that is everything tech that we use results from the combination of specific and abstract data. The system is such that it encourages people to do research without thinking about long term effects, that some greater powers that be will sort that out. Well that’s bullshit. The greater powers are the military. I simply can’t say, “it’s out of my hands, so I’ll just toil and hope for the best,” because technology is too overwhelming, we are too dependant on in it, and research is too removed from consequences. So what to do? Limiting research will surely infringe on personal freedoms. I have always been an advocate of enshrining engineers with ethics (as opposed to morals) in college, but that was deemed to periphery, I think it’s critical. And perhaps, as a policy maker, I could do something about that.
So why law? Well, I was a para for many summers, so I know the day to day. I like thinking about those kinds of problems, conflict resolution, perhaps dabbling in policy making. I know a lot about technology, both intricate and procedural, and what with all these IP/regulation/free speech/safety issues, being a lawyer with a masters in engineering will be quite useful. And the cash. That’s nice too. And you can do it in any major city, anywhere in the world.
Why not? Lawyers are assholes for the most part, not always personally, but in a working environment. They’re sort of like modern mercenaries, the best are ruthless and efficient. This doesn’t say much about lawyers, but its says good things about society, if we need to be dicks to each other at least we don’t need to rape and pillage anymore. Just pillage, I guess. And then there’s the money. Sure it can pay well. But when it does, you’re usually just mediating between two entities that have too much money anyway…. oh well.
So I’m taking the LSAT’s. We’ll see how I do.