Lawyering?
Man, big decisions are such incredible bitches for me when I have so much time to choose and change my mind. Picking my college the first time wasn't so bad because matriculation was more or less binding, but deciding whether or not to transfer to Texas was an agonizingly protracted decision because I had so much time to ponder and vacillate.
I am similarly tortured in career goals. I wanted to be a doctor throughout about half of high school, and a mediator for much of the rest. From the time I had to start picking colleges to the time I left GW I flipped through journalist, president of the United States, ambassador, professor of international affairs, public policy analyst, and professor of economics. This semester I've been a multipolar nutjob, switching almost daily between the options of professor of economics, high school teacher, public policy analyst, poker player, and lawyer.
Having soon-to-be filthy rich petroleum engineers as my roommates has probably given me a newfound desire for cash, and my doubts about my ability and motivation to do research have weakened my desire to go headlong into economics, and so I find myself leaning towards law at least for today. I have no idea what I could expect from such a career, but there's a good chance that I would actually quite enjoy work in some form of corporate law, especially if I can use my training in mathematics and economics to be awesome. There's also a good chance that I would hate my life and explode.
But the thing is, there is a none-too-small chance that all of my future careers will wind up that way, and if I were to hypothetically burn out in any one of them after five years, law would easily leave me in the best shape to rebound from an early midlife crisis (I'd be 31, financially well-off, and in possession of a JD).
In my Game Theory class I'm actually planning to write a short paper that would model this sort of decision-making for a student, but it would be much simpler, with only two careers to choose from, and probably only two time periods in which to choose. I would do much better if I could insert myself in that model instead of having time to make infinitely many decisions over a large set of career options--I would actually do better here to minimize my set of choices and force a deadline on myself. I wish I could.
I am similarly tortured in career goals. I wanted to be a doctor throughout about half of high school, and a mediator for much of the rest. From the time I had to start picking colleges to the time I left GW I flipped through journalist, president of the United States, ambassador, professor of international affairs, public policy analyst, and professor of economics. This semester I've been a multipolar nutjob, switching almost daily between the options of professor of economics, high school teacher, public policy analyst, poker player, and lawyer.
Having soon-to-be filthy rich petroleum engineers as my roommates has probably given me a newfound desire for cash, and my doubts about my ability and motivation to do research have weakened my desire to go headlong into economics, and so I find myself leaning towards law at least for today. I have no idea what I could expect from such a career, but there's a good chance that I would actually quite enjoy work in some form of corporate law, especially if I can use my training in mathematics and economics to be awesome. There's also a good chance that I would hate my life and explode.
But the thing is, there is a none-too-small chance that all of my future careers will wind up that way, and if I were to hypothetically burn out in any one of them after five years, law would easily leave me in the best shape to rebound from an early midlife crisis (I'd be 31, financially well-off, and in possession of a JD).
In my Game Theory class I'm actually planning to write a short paper that would model this sort of decision-making for a student, but it would be much simpler, with only two careers to choose from, and probably only two time periods in which to choose. I would do much better if I could insert myself in that model instead of having time to make infinitely many decisions over a large set of career options--I would actually do better here to minimize my set of choices and force a deadline on myself. I wish I could.
Labels: game theory, law
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