Orientation is Over

Personally, I think you should find something to do with your life that you love.  One of the measures by which you can tell if you love what you do is if it energizes you or drains you.  If that's any indication, I really don't like sitting down all darned day.

That'll be a problem on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I have 3 classes that go back-to-back-to-back.  I get a long lunch break, but other than that, it's going to be one biggo day of sitting in lectures.

The orientation was pretty much what I expected.  Some good information in there.  Some, not so good relative to the amount of time involved.  Overall, I'm glad I went.

Okay, now for impressions:

1.  I feel very well prepared for this.  At this point, I feel pretty confident that due to my pre-Law self-study, I'm ahead of most of the students.  Eventually, they'll all catch up.  I'm curious to see how long it takes them to close the gap.  I had a secret fear that I'd show up and that everybody would have already digested the E&Es more thoroughly than I did and that they'd all know about LEEWS.  I think I'm in rare company, though.  I am hoping this will give me an edge on final exams in December. 

2.  Tort law, according to one practitioner is dead in Ohio.  Tort reform wasn't really necessary.  The insurance companies just stopped being so stupid in how they handle potential litigants. 

3.  Met a TON of people, and I was the only one that I ran into who had an Information Systems degree.  I found that odd.  In fact, nearly nobody in there had a background in the hard sciences.  The reason this is interesting?  Apparently one of very few good fields for attorneys right now is computer science undergrad guys who are working in Intellectual Property.  My faculty advisor is an IP/Patent guy.  I'm going to sit down with him and try to get more information on this.

My degree:  Information Technology, is like the short-bus cousin of Computer Engineering and Computer Science.  This is important in a lot of ways.  For one, Computer Engineering and Computer Science guys can qualify to be patent attorneys.  I can't. 

I'm curious how close my degree is.  It may be close enough.  You can practice IP law without being qualified to be a patent attorney.  I'll have to do some poking and prodding around.  I may get an IP concentration during my law school program of study.

4.  I'm also thinking about doing a joint degree.  Half the reason I'm getting my JD is a bucket-list thing, anyway.  Also remaining on the bucket list is a Ph.D.  If I'm going to get a Ph.D., this is the time to do it.  It would probably take a year less to do it as a joint program than as two separate programs.  I'll have to look into this.  Unfortunately, U of Toledo doesn't seem to have many Ph.D. programs I'm interested in. 

The one I'm closest to being a fit for is a Manufacturing and Technology Ph.D. with an Information Systems emphasis.  Last time I looked into this, I lacked some prerequisites, but I see that the program doesn't appear to still be a joint program with the college of engineering.

The upside is that I'm relatively certain I could get a faculty position somewhere if I earned this Ph.D.  The downside is that I think it would make it very, very difficult to gain employment in the law.  It might enhance my credentials for a very narrow number of jobs, and it would make me look less serious about a law career to most people.

Something to think about.  I'm pinging the director of the Ph.D. program, now, to see if I meet the prereqs.  If I have to go back and take two semesters of undergraduate calculus, that's probably going to be a deal-breaker.

5.  I'm pretty sure I was the oldest guy there.  There was one woman who looked older, but turns out she's a year younger.  I didn't see anybody else who looked close. 

I'm just going to relax for a few more minutes and see which cases I need to brief before Monday.

At this point, the starting gun just went off. 

The race is on.