LOL I do what old men do. I consult. I was fortunate enough to demonstrate a practical knowledge, and a willingness to not keep my mouth shut, so when people need someone to commit to an idea, rather than hem and haw, I get a call. My writing skills? I now write proposals for enterprises intending to burn an astronomical amount of money. The rest of my time I spend assuring family members the world isn't going to end day after tomorrow.
I am a high school English instructor at a career technical school, and a village councilman, and an author.
I'm an attorney for child protective services. I write when I can spare time in the evenings/weekends.
Wuahahaha! One more, and the triumvirate will be established. Only then may we ascend to our rightful place.
I'm patent bar eligible based on a biology background, but alas, I have never taken the patent bar. Everyone from the big firms around here said that without an advanced degree, Masters minimum, that they couldn't sell me. In this market, I'm not surprised lol.
Yes, that has really changed. When I graduated law school with a background in Biochemistry, I was told not to worry about the advanced degree. I don't think there were that many patent attorneys with a life sciences background coming out yet. And indeed the large law firms didn't care about my lack of an advanced degree. Now, for patent attorneys starting out, an advanced degree is almost required by most of the large firms (with respect to life sciences only). Not that you need the degree to actually do the work; I think it is more of a comfort level for the clients, who tend to see that advanced degree as desirable.
I can't speak to litigation, but patent prosecution is largely done via technical, rather than legal, argument. "The references don't disclose this feature." (Well, before 101 rejections became all the rage, anyway.) I'm not in the life sciences, but I can see why someone would want a patent prosecutor to have an advanced degree. Me, I had a BS and a couple of decades of experience doing cutting-edge industrial CS/EE R&D before going to law school.
Patent preparation and prosecution is the predominant portion of my practice. In addition to biochem/biotech, I handle mechanical, medical device, petroleum, computer software (to the extent it is viable post-Alice), and other art areas. I don't do any E.E., because that's the one area I don't have the ability to work with the technical aspects. Everything else I've been able to do, and have been since I was thrown into when I first started at a large firm that was building its life sciences practice over 16 years ago. I've even done a lot of aerospace, because when I first started the firm had a couple of large life sciences clients, which was nice for experience, but not nearly enough to allow me to meet my billable hour requirement, so I got thrown into just about everything and one of the partners with extra work was an aerospace engineer. Given the breadth of my practice in comparison to my technical background, I don't feel an advanced degree is required for prosecution. Not that it hurts in any way--it can be an asset. But it's not a necessity. It's not hard for me to understand the Examiner's references (outside of EE), the subject invention, claims, etc., and apart from those things it's largely a matter of understanding the client's business model when it comes to prosecution. In any event, my former boss started wanting advanced degrees by around 2005 or so, and always said he wanted to be able to tell the clients he had people with those degrees. But I still did the bulk of life sciences work with no advanced degree (though I did spend two years in a Ph.D. program doing coursework before bailing out to law school).
There was quite a bit left to go on the research side. I'd done some research, but also spent a couple semesters teachings, so it would have taken a while. After the LSAT I got a scholarship offer to law school and they wouldn't hold it over a year, so I didn't even go for a Masters, just went to law school instead. Patent law has been enjoyable. I've only recently been pulled into any litigation, which is great for hours but not exactly my thing!
Yeah, I didn't think litigation would be my thing....but it's odd how things turn out. I started on the civil defense side with a big-law firm and am slowly making my way into state prosecution. Right now I work for CPS prosecuting child abuse and neglect cases, but hope to transition over to more traditional prosecution at some point. I had to get out of private practice, as the hours and expectations were atrocious!
Worked in the business spectrum for a little bit. Realized I've no passion in chasing the holy dollar an am now pursuing a career as a neurologist. PhD programs for neurology can be quite difficult to get into, but I'm too stubborn to give up. Actually, I think PhD programs in general are difficult to enter.
My brother is doing a PhD at the moment. Not in neurology though. I am a student on the side. I also have transitioned from working part time as a researcher/catalogue and "unofficial" curator for a local museum to working at my university due to the former going pear-shape (long story - perhaps even worthy of a book ). My new job is not nearly as interesting (I work as a student help, helping new students around the whole university 'thing') but it pays the bills... so there we go.
I'm a Vector & Pixel Wizard. I conjure sweet-ass graphics for my corporate overlords. ETA: I do most of my writing on weekends/holidays, though I'm sometimes able to snatch a few hours in the evenings or mornings. I'm painfully slow to accelerate, and I can't always reach that Zen writing mode when I'm hemmed in by chores on either side.
Restaurant manager and expeditor, which makes me a professional nagger... seriously. I tell people what tasks they have to do in which order because they don't have the mental real estate to keep them in their short term memory, whereas I only use my short term memory and store nothing long term.
It probably does, but I can assure you that in practice it's anything but boring. More like a trial by fire every day with an account worth half a million dollars at stake.
I posted in here, but didn't say what it is I'm currently doing.... Well, aside from being a lab hand, I monitor security cameras for a mall in the city. Boring doesn't even begin to describe the job, but at least I can study or read for fun whilst sitting in the back room all by my lonesome. Edit: I used to work in Finance. Which, again, if you don't love the holy dollar and wanna spend insane hours at work...well, that job might not be for you. Wasn't for me, haha.
