Help me drop out of school (resume, job search question)

[mantasm]

After writing this, I realize it's fairly long, so consider yourself warned if you don't like reading. In summary, I'm seeking advice on a job search after a period of playing poker full time.


Some background: I graduated in May 2004 with a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Texas. At graduation I looked for a job for a few months. In September, I still hadn't found anything so I sent in an application to UT's law school. During undergrad I had considered some sort of graduate education, but I wanted to work a few years first and get a better idea of what I wanted to do.

During my period of unemployment I had been moving up in limits online and was soon making enough money to live off. I was accepted to the law school fairly quickly and stopped looking for a job because I was relieved to finally have something definitely in place. So now I'm in my second month of law school, and I've quickly realized that this is not what I want to do. I don't want to be a lawyer, and I don't want to waste three years doing something I'm not interested in and won't use. I don't want to be a full time poker player either.


What I really want to do now is get a job like I was planning to before. I doubt I will be returning to school any time in the near (5 years) future, or law school ever. I found a copy of my resume on my laptop and I'm revising it and getting it up to date. I have some questions about this:

1. Should I include my short stint (not even one complete semester yet) in law school under the education section, or would it be better to just leave it off?

2. Which would generally be preferable when searching for an engineering job: a 1.5 year gap since my last employment or educational activity, or 1.5 years of self-employment as an internet poker player?

3. If I choose to put poker on my resume, how should I describe it? I don't want to put anything deceitful or silly like "internet risk analyst." I was thinking I would list it under the employment section as something like "Self Employed, Internet Poker Business" with a list of bullet points describing what I did, similar to my prior jobs. These would be things to emphasize activities I did that would relate to a real job, like "calculated mathematical expectation of wagers". If you have any suggestions for bullet points, they would be appreciated.

4. If I include a cover letter, should I mention the internet poker and law school and my reasons for not wanting to pursue them any further?


Finally, if anyone has any general advice or comments on my situation or would like to review my resume, please post here or PM me. And if you live in Austin and are aware of any engineering or business related positions open at your company, please let me know. Thank you for your time.

[Nightwish]

So you're what, 23 or so? Why are you so anxious to go get a job? You can take this any way you want to, but dropping out of law school right now and taking an engineering job may end up being the biggest mistake of your life. This is not about the money. It's about the fact that a JD (or just about any doctorate, for that matter) opens up many more doors than your BS ever will. This doesn't mean that you have to be a lawyer. You can go into business, management (strategy or operations) consulting, and other fields. A BS in engineering is becoming more and more worthless with every year. I know this sounds snooty, but this is the truth. You need at least an MS to get a good job, and even then you'll likely end up being an engineer all your life. Is that what you want to do? Are you sure? Cause engineering can get pretty boring pretty quickly. Wouldn't you rather open more doors than shut them?

As for putting poker on your resume, it has already been discussed many times. You can put it in your hobbies section, but don't put it under employment. The upside is tiny, but the potential downside of doing so is huge.

Anyway, the bottom line is you should stick with law school, get that degree and accomplishment under your belt, and then see what you want to do. There are many career paths for people with a JD besides "lawyer," but you'll never get to find out if you make the mistake of dropping out now.

[mattw]

there have been several posts in the past similiar to yours. unfortunately i never followed the results and i think a search would be useless.

regarding your points, i think that its 50/50 whether a potential employer will see them as positive or negitive. heres my thoughts but im a TAG.

1. put law school on it. it shows you have the ability to enter such a program and the wisdom not to persue something you dont like.

2. show poker as a self employed internet poker pro. its better than leaving a gap in employment. i would think most employers would find this interesting and since you did this for 1.5 years and was succesfull at it says something about your ability.

3. describe your poker days truthfully and be prepared why you no longer choose that occupation.

4. i would not include law school and poker in the cover letter. get your foot in the door first before explaining them.

my 2c. gl.

if you're not at a top 15 program, it makes sense to drop out. u're not going to make much more, if any, than in engineering.

[Eratosthenes]

Hi mantasm--

I am a chemical engineer and spent over 20 years in big corporations before I got tired of corporate BS and took a buy out deal. I have hired many scientists and engineers.

First, don't put anything deceptive in your resume. If discovered during the interview process, you will be eliminated from consideration. If discovered after you are hired, it can be grounds for immediate termination. When I was general manager of a manufacturing business, I interviewed every candidate and I always looked for "interesting" gaps in the candidate's resume and asked about them. I, personally, would have no problem with your experience, but I would have a big problem with you trying to deceive me about it.

Second, many prospective employers will not have a problem with either your brief attendance of law school or with playing poker for a living. These are the guys that you should look for.

The gulf coast is about to have a construction boom. The engineering firms supporting this will be hiring engineers like mad. Use your web skills to find engineering companies in Baton Rouge (hint: Shaw Group, RPM Engineering), Mobile, etc. A lot of young engineers are not interested in working for these types of companies, but they are great for gaining experience and resume building.

[mantasm]

[ QUOTE ]
So you're what, 23 or so? Why are you so anxious to go get a job? You can take this any way you want to, but dropping out of law school right now and taking an engineering job may end up being the biggest mistake of your life. This is not about the money. It's about the fact that a JD (or just about any doctorate, for that matter) opens up many more doors than your BS ever will. This doesn't mean that you have to be a lawyer. You can go into business, management (strategy or operations) consulting, and other fields. A BS in engineering is becoming more and more worthless with every year. I know this sounds snooty, but this is the truth. You need at least an MS to get a good job, and even then you'll likely end up being an engineer all your life. Is that what you want to do? Are you sure? Cause engineering can get pretty boring pretty quickly. Wouldn't you rather open more doors than shut them?

As for putting poker on your resume, it has already been discussed many times. You can put it in your hobbies section, but don't put it under employment. The upside is tiny, but the potential downside of doing so is huge.

Anyway, the bottom line is you should stick with law school, get that degree and accomplishment under your belt, and then see what you want to do. There are many career paths for people with a JD besides "lawyer," but you'll never get to find out if you make the mistake of dropping out now.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for your input. You have some good questions. I appreciate you pointing out that there are other things I need to think about.

I'm not sure that I want to be an engineer for the rest of my life. But it is what I want to do now. I don't really doubt that going to law school right now was a poor decision. I pretty much knew what I was getting into and did it anyway because I was too discouraged or lazy to keep searching for a job after a few months.

At the beginning of law school they give this speech about how most lawyers are unhappy for various reasons. Then they give a list of reasons you should quit right now. "You shouldn't be in law school if..." you're doing it for the money, you're doing it because you can't think of anything else to do, you don't like writing, etc. Pretty much everything on their list applied to me. Because I'm pretty stubborn I just thought, oh well, whatever, I'm doing it anyway. Not that I had any other options.

Your advice about a JD opening non-law doors is somewhat true, but the consensus, even among faculty in the law school, is that if you don't want to practice law you're better off not going to law school. It's not really a general degree that applies to many other fields like an MBA-type degree is. You pretty much just learn the law. Although it will open up some doors, I'm not sure they'd be to anything I'd be interested in, and the opportunity cost isn't really worth finding out right now. Not to mention many of the doors would be open without the JD.

I do realize that there may be a time when I feel like going back to law school would be a good idea although it doesn't seem like it at the time. Before leaving school I would at least make sure that I would be able to reapply in the future without any hit to my GPA from incomplete classes or whatever. Having started before would make it harder to be readmitted but I'm fairly sure I'd be able to get in again. I should also point out that I wouldn't just drop out and start looking for a job, I plan on continuing to work on school and just look for jobs in the mean time.


I see that you don't think poker in a resume is a good idea, do you think it's better than putting nothing at all?

If you don't mind me asking, what do you do/what advanced degrees do you have? I'm not asking to challenge you or anything, I'm just curious.

Thanks for taking the time to write all of that, it really did give me good things to think about.

[mantasm]

[ QUOTE ]
if you're not at a top 15 program, it makes sense to drop out. u're not going to make much more, if any, than in engineering.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey, texas is a top 15 program!! There is the possibility to make 125K coming out, but I'm not the kind of person who will ever be willing to put in 80 hrs every week at a big law firm to make that. Money is not all that important to me. I expect I would not make much more than I would as an engineer coming out.

[mantasm]

[ QUOTE ]
there have been several posts in the past similiar to yours. unfortunately i never followed the results and i think a search would be useless.

regarding your points, i think that its 50/50 whether a potential employer will see them as positive or negitive. heres my thoughts but im a TAG.

1. put law school on it. it shows you have the ability to enter such a program and the wisdom not to persue something you dont like.

2. show poker as a self employed internet poker pro. its better than leaving a gap in employment. i would think most employers would find this interesting and since you did this for 1.5 years and was succesfull at it says something about your ability.

3. describe your poker days truthfully and be prepared why you no longer choose that occupation.

4. i would not include law school and poker in the cover letter. get your foot in the door first before explaining them.

my 2c. gl.

[/ QUOTE ]

I read over the past threads and the discussion was fairly general and not very helpful. I guess my problem would be choosing between two negatives, the poker thing, and the not working for a long time thing. I think I slightly prefer the poker thing if I'm able to present it in a positive light on the resume. Do you have any suggestions toward that end?

Thanks for your reply.

[mantasm]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi mantasm--

I am a chemical engineer and spent over 20 years in big corporations before I got tired of corporate BS and took a buy out deal. I have hired many scientists and engineers.

First, don't put anything deceptive in your resume. If discovered during the interview process, you will be eliminated from consideration. If discovered after you are hired, it can be grounds for immediate termination. When I was general manager of a manufacturing business, I interviewed every candidate and I always looked for "interesting" gaps in the candidate's resume and asked about them. I, personally, would have no problem with your experience, but I would have a big problem with you trying to deceive me about it.

Second, many prospective employers will not have a problem with either your brief attendance of law school or with playing poker for a living. These are the guys that you should look for.

The gulf coast is about to have a construction boom. The engineering firms supporting this will be hiring engineers like mad. Use your web skills to find engineering companies in Baton Rouge (hint: Shaw Group, RPM Engineering), Mobile, etc. A lot of young engineers are not interested in working for these types of companies, but they are great for gaining experience and resume building.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree about not using any false pretenses to get a job, and I'm certain any employers would too. Would you prefer to ask about an employment gap during an interview, or find out that I was sitting around playing poker for a year from my resume?

What type of company do you think would be least likely to have a problem with my weird resume? This is probably hard to answer.

Thanks for the tip about the gulf coast companies, I'll look into it.

[blackize]

I think you just need to make sure to show your maturity in your resume or cover letter. Showing that you realize that poker isn't going to take you anywhere says a lot about you. I feel that listing it is MUCH better than a 1.5 year gap in employment.

If you leave it off you will be asked about the gap in your interview anyways.