How I spent the last 55 years: went to Pembroke aka Brown for undergrad; worked for a bank; went to (and hated) Harvard Law School; practiced law at a firm and then in-house; decided I preferred science to law; got a PhD in physics from Columbia and said "Never" when anyone suggested I was going to into patent law; married physicist Phil Bucksbaum; worked for a New York patent litigation boutique (never say "Never"); moved with Phil to Ann Arbor when he left Bell Labs for the University of Michigan; lucked into teaching patent law at Michigan; gave birth to our daughter Caroline (who chose the University of Toronto for college, got a masters in urban planning, works for the city of Toronto now, and is a dual citizen); acted in an Ann Arbor
community theater production of Neil Simon's _Rumors_ (which inspired me to master the art of Julia Child's Lemon Tart); moved with my family to California when Phil was hired by Stanford; created and taught an interdisciplinary seminar called "Scientific Evidence in Patent Litigation" for Stanford Law students and science grad students; began doing theater in my spare time (which became more than spare when my seminar was discontinued after 7 years); wrote four patent law amicus briefs on my own behalf, the last of which was cited by the appellate court (15 minutes of fame at last?); went to the 50th reunion and, besides getting to have long talks with old friends from our new-10 official, Judy Klavens and Nancy Kellerman, discovered other Bay Area Hunterites: Fae Hamilton and Susan Siegel, who attended the reunion, and Janice Meyers Kursky who didn't, but her post on Facebook that she now lives in the Bay Area resulted in the four of us having lunch together regularly, even during the pandemic only not as often, and doing things together like going to book-promotion talks by Gloria Steinem and Billy Collins.
We have also discovered that the Hunter test selected for some unexpected traits: 1. _not_ being a picky eater (which makes it easy for us to order lunch: pre-pandemic we would get 4 different dishes and eat family-style); 2. _yes_ having excellent taste in art (we all think so, anyway); and 3. having a flare for interior decoration: our homes are all attractive and comfortable
Debbie Israel Allen's comment in the 2017 biographies that our class displays an above average use of parentheses struck home. Debbie makes a good point about our drive for precision. Accuracy and thoroughness of thought are ever important.
What do I do now? I work with my neighbors in Menlo Park, California to improve pedestrian safety and oppose unnecessary heritage tree removals, I occasionally demonstrate with the Raging Grannies; and I perform on stage (since 2008), film (since 2017) and zoom (since 2020). Some clips and reels are on Instagram @RobertaMorrisActs. Acting is a good retirement job if you're not in it for the money.
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