You haven't been able to find a job as a limnologist, so you've taken a non-paying internship for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Lake Okeechobee. Your job is to check the Herbert Hoover Dike for cracks. You feel like a little Dutch boy.

You get a paying job working for the county gathering water samples periodically from the local water treatment plants and reporting on them. Your friends know you aren't working for a perfumery, and they're tactful about it.

You're working out in the field (as opposed to inside an oppressive water treatment plant) as an employee of the local government's environmental task force. You visit the area's lakes, streams, and ponds, and report on the plant and animal life in and around them.

As a consultant for various cities and counties, you're now specializing in bacterioplankton. Your knowledge and work on this is needed because you've discovered ways to use bacterioplankton to remineralize drinking water—a key to good health, of course (and it cuts down on the need to purchase plastic bottles of expensive water from France and Fiji).

You're the top limnologist in the country, giving informative and inspiring speeches and presentations to members of the EPA, Congress, schoolchildren, and anyone interested in the state of this earth's waters.