To Imélie, the course MGSC 6020: Business stats and models was a straightforward course that gave her the impression of not learning anything, especially since she was able to leverage her successes at the VMC into getting advanced standing by taking a placement test and then get credit for multi-variable calculus as a first year undergraduate and getting AP Stats credit as well. So, there was only one class where she was actually learning something she didn't already know, and that was strategic management. When at work prior to a design meeting with the chief engineer and the backend lead...

Oh my God, these meetings about drafting the design documents... I hate these because I know that often what will lead to cost overruns will come from poorly defined requirements, and scope, as well as the inability of some project managers to resist the temptation to add more features or widen the scope even in the absence of feature creep, Imélie muses, while a new IT project commissioned by a new client is in its early stages. A planning meeting gets underway...

"I cannot stress this enough: before we start the actual development and architectural work, we need to ensure that we have access to all the info we need to properly assess the feasibility of what you're asking us to do, and to determine properly whether the essential requirements actually are essential, and also what makes these things essential" Imélie then tells the other engineers.

"Imélie, you do realize that sometimes the opacity of the requirements may well be intentional, especially if secrecy is involved, such as for the defense industry, or sometimes requirements suddenly change? Often it happens by legislation changing, which frankly is most concerning when it comes to cybersecurity or privacy aspects" Juan scolds her.

"Yes. Anything non-essential should instead be added as extra modules if possible." She then turns to the client's representatives. "Is there any reason why you want this in particular?" she asks pointing at a specific feature that, to her, would increase the requirements for cache or memory requirements to make the project work, to say nothing of other hardware requirements

"We might tell you if you all sign a non-disclosure agreement" the client's representative then tells the engineers.

"You either seem to be acting in bad faith or it's a small component of a much larger secret project you saw fit to outsource components of it piecemeal, with each subcontractor not seeing what the others are doing!" Imélie then points out to the client.

The left hand not seeing what the right hand is doing has definitely done some IT projects in, especially when the end client resorts to subcontracting components piecemeal that way. This is a red flag to me, because it makes the post-deployment maintenance that much more complex: you need cross-compatibility at a minimum, Imélie thinks while everyone works to ascertain what the true requirements and scope are.

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And then Juan has yet another meeting in private regarding a suggestion she made regarding their love and family life.

"It seems like, after months of trying to find the right couples' therapist, we finally have one that we might be able to work with, even though it means we need to meet with the therapist at night" Juan then tells Imélie.

"Therapy is often a night job when your patients are of working age. But I hope you can make progress, even though said progress will often be slow and take weeks or months and maybe even save the marriage. Unless, of course, your wife gets a new and better job that requires moving some distance away from New Orleans. After all, your first divorce was caused by getting a new job that required you to move" Imélie then makes her observations.

"My lawyer was right about what you said about couples' therapy and a subsequent divorce. It really does make a difference in court"

"Does Medicare or college financial aid for kids enter the equation then? These were the most common kinds of situations where people could have used IRC Section three fifty-one for a divorce"

"No"

Divorcing for college financial aid relies on the child needing it being under the custody of the lower-income parent. Which means it's more likely to work if the higher-income parent has issues that may make said parent less fit to raise the child in question.

"Are there any other medical issues, for anyone in your family that might have an impact on your marriage? I didn't think it was appropriate for me to ask you about it before, but..."

"My wife is depressive, but what made her depressive has nothing to do with you. I wonder sometimes, you seem able to understand legal issues much better than I believed you would have. I wonder what made the practice of the law, or law school, a poor fit for you. You seemed to put a lot on pressure on yourself"

"I heard enough about horror stories from practicing lawyers in that you need to sacrifice work-life balance, you would be saddled with debt for years, and maybe even the rest of your life, or even if you could avoid debt or work-life balance traps, your early careers have you limit what you can actually do for clients, or if you could actually do what clients wanted out of their legal engagements with you, the workload of doing what clients actually ask of you makes you mentally ill. You know how traumatizing it is for a young lawyer that used to perform well both as an undergraduate and in law school, and realize they were trained to do things that will take years before they will actually get to perform these tasks"

I can count myself lucky that Tulane's careerism wasn't as extreme as at UPenn and the like. From what I heard at the time from people that made it to Ivies or equivalent, and certainly from Marcia since she kept playing quiz bowl once at UPenn, most people were funneled towards 5 career paths: law and consulting for humanities and social sciences, medicine (dental or not) and high tech for STEM majors, finance for all. I for one am glad to have gone to Tulane and not these schools my contemporaries in high school attended, Imélie reflects on one aspect of why she ruled out law school right out of undergrad.

"The other thing that made me not want to go into law school was that its learning style didn't seem fit me at all"

"It certainly didn't come off that way to me. That said, as always, I will make sure that I will consult with my lawyer before acting on what you could have to say regarding my marriage or divorce. So maybe I can claim, if it comes to that, my ex's mental health does not allow her to take proper care of the kids, in which case she might have visit rights but not shared custody"

"I hope this will not happen and that therapy will help you two"