For people trying to go outside that rather limiting box (besides just changing game systems), there are dual classed and multi-classed characters. A dual classed character stops progressing in a given class (like “Fighter”) and starts over with a new class, keeping the attributes of the old one but having them frozen at previous progression. A multi-classed character is more of a time-share in classes. He or she is two or more classes at once but has to split their experience points equally between these classes. The character also takes a penalty (10% or 15% or something) off of the top of experience points for the fact that he or she is multi-classed so progression is both slower (with multiple classes in play) and less efficient.

So, I was making a bad geek joke of whether I should be a dual classed Engineer/Professor (or “Doctor”) by ending one and starting with the other or whether I should do both together but not terribly efficiently and not able to advance one further than the other. :-)

I’d forgotten why you had wound up in Madison before but I recall it now.

I do enjoy software. I am a geek and it is a lot of fun. I can’t complain about perks (heck, I think I shaved once this week) or the pay. The question is whether I want to spend my life doing it. It is almost all I’ve done since college and I may want to do more than one career or role in this lifetime. I know you had your army stint with the band, after all!

As to the rest, thank you for at least calling me “bright.” :-) I only wish, really, that there wasn’t a year and a half lead time with only one deadline a year for this decision. If I could go in Spring, I would apply for a year from now probably and see where it went.

The financial part is what has scared me the most. To go from making really good money to, probably, making none at all, for years and to then follow this by only a chance at a job in the field of my new PhD is very scary. I’m not a risk taking kind of guy, by nature, and this, combined with just finishing my Master’s thesis, was what stopped me from applying last Fall.

Well, you don’t remind me much of the guy in the picture, and also, I can’t really figure out how the title (“*classed”) fits in with the rest of the post, which, BTW, I liked. I feel your pain re: the financial toll of PhDing, having supported my wife through same, but also appreciate the Sly-ism, a guy’s gotta do, etc., &co. Personally, I appreciate software because they don’t require that you adopt some kind of approved, Republican mindset in order to make a living if you can do your job competently, but I also understand that I’ve got a relatively good deal. So, I think, do you, and that’s a good thing!

Still, you’re a bright guy who still believes in concepts, and I could think of a lot worse candidates for self-sacrifice on the altar of intellectual idealism. If your spouse’s OK with it, I’d say go for it. I feel her pain more than I feel yours, having been there and done that. But it might work out pretty well, you being a bright guy and all, which would make your friends happy to no end!

W.B.