[bendsawyer]

I closed out a successful investment career to go to college (never went) and ended up a professor of engineering. Then job is mostly testing new ideas and technologies and writing about it. Its a lot of freedom to play, the ability to mentor hand selected students through undergraduate (1-2yr) masters (2 yr) and PhD (4-6 year) sets of projects. Thank to my background I don’t work too hard to find funding, and because this is my 2nd yolo career, I’m not stressed in the way many academics can be. I started my academic career at MIT, but while my work thrived the place was a pressure cooker. Note I’m at a growing regional research university. I use the time this gets back to start a lot of side projects in areas totally unrelated to my PhD. I travel a lot.

It’s fun. I’m never bored. I’d never have imagined this would be my life.