Jobs and Journals

Now is the time in our law school careers when we despair.

As DG notes, the process of applying and interviewing for 1L summer jobs is in full swing, and there's nothing like this process to beat all hope and self-confidence right out of even the least neurotic law student. Case in point: I had a mock interview Friday, so I went to school in my monkey suit, which prompted the following conversation w/a fellow 1L who spent several years working in some business-related pursuit before coming to law school :

Fellow 1L: Why the suit?

Me: Mock interview.

Fellow 1L: Oh, do you have any interviews scheduled for the public interest interview program?

Me: Yeah, but just one -- out of 15 bids!

Fellow 1L: I didn't get any, but I don't really care about public interest.

Me: That's surprising, since you have some good work experience that I figured employers would love.

Fellow 1L: Yeah, but I didn't try to hard w/those applications. What about you? Don't you have some work experience?

Me: Sure, I spent the last four years teaching college English classes. I figured more employers would like to see that, that I'd get more than one interview out of 15 apps.

Fellow 1L: [frowns] Yeah, right. No one's going to want to hire you when they see you've never been in the real world.

Me: Oh. Yeah. Sure.

See? Conversations like that just make your day! I mean, what a great confidence builder! And I don't think the guy had a clue what a callous and ignorant insult he'd just delivered. But whatever. I went to my mock interview with a great guy from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When it was over he said I did fine, and that the message my resume sent wasn't "academic who has never been in the real world," but "this guy sure has done a lot of things" or something like that. He said I had a good "story" that tied everything together and made my choice of law seem like a logical progression from my past work experiences. Like I said, he was a nice guy, but even if he was just trying to build my confidence, I appreciated it. For most of us, I don't think law school comes with nearly enough confidence-builders.

So now is the time on Sprockets when we dance! Not.

I mean, it appears that now is the time in law school when everyone gets incredibly pissy and jealous and neurotic about grades and jobs and did I mention jealous and anxious and scared? So people lash out at other people, maybe. Like a few people lashed out at Glorfindel last week, and more recently, the Ghost. Jealousy is an evil mistress, but I do hope Adam will reconsider: Don't give up the Ghost!!

As I glance at my bank statements and write yet another huge check for the huge amount of rent I pay in order to live close to school, the thought of possibly not getting a job this summer is, frankly, terrifying. The thought of getting a job that provides legal experience but no paycheck is only slightly less terrifying. But that's just the thing about this law school deal: If you happen to be lucky enough (or work hard enough, or whatever) to get a piece of good news like a good grade or a job offer, even then you don't get the props you deserve. Grad school was the same way -- an elaborate system of ritualized hazing.

And speaking of lack of confidence-builders and elaborate systems of ritualized hazing, GW's journal write-on competition is next month. I started law school thinking I'd try to write on to a journal for sure; now I'm much less certain. Luckily I don't have to decide in a vacuum: Stay of Execution says law review seems seriously overrated, while Notes from the (Legal) Underground says it was a great experience. I'll probably maybe give it a whirl. Probably maybe. Shockingly, I'm pretty ambivalent about it. ;-)

The next few weeks promise a furry of extracurricular confidence-busting opportunities. Next week includes my first oral argument for the brief I turned in last week (only 5 minutes under very relaxed conditions), an interview, a "Client Counseling Competition for the ADR Board, meetings for mock trial preparation, watching the final round of the upper-class moot court competition , and probably some other things I'm forgetting. The mock trial competition itself takes place in three weeks, and that journal write-on competition will be in about a month. I feel like Three Years of Hell: Where did January go? Is it just me, or does every 1L at this point feel like classes and reading are just something you do in your spare time?

p.s.: Happy (late) Birthday to Bekah!

Posted 05:57 AM | Comments (4) | law school

Elections and Audiences

As you may have noticed, the content at ai has recently leaned heavily toward discussion of the Democratic primary process. This wasn't intentional, but yeah, I've gotten a little caught up in it. Now it seems that at least one reader thinks I've gone too far. So, for anyone who would prefer their ai to be more law school, less election, I humbly direct your attention to this page, which collects only those posts that relate to law school in some way. Bookmark that page, and you'll get all the ai law school goodness and you won't have to hear another peep about elections from me. (Unless, of course, I screw up the categories on accident sometime, which has been known to happen.)

Short of reading only the law school category page of ai, you can always skip posts based on their category marker, which now appears in the upper-left corner of each post. (The category for this post is "meta-blogging.") If you don't enjoy reading long and possibly boring posts about the current presidential election process, please skip all posts marked election 2004.

However, while I am a 1L, I never intended ai to focus exclusively, or even primarily, on law school. Nor do I intend to proselytize for Howard Dean (or any other candidate or cause) or convince anyone of anything. I try not to flatter myself by thinking I could really influence anyone on anything meaningful. Instead, my posts about the campaign are simply accretions of data I would like to save for myself, for future reference, because I find them interesting, etc. In fact, that's what this whole blog is -- a bunch of annotated links and thoughts I think are interesting and which I'd like to remember and save for whatever reason. Ninety-nine percent of the time I have very little idea of who my audience is, or why anyone reads any of this, or if anyone even is reading it. But your comments do expand what I know about my audience, and whatever else you decide to comment about. I appreciate every one of them.

In addition to the new category tags that give you more flexibility in filtering your posts, ai has undergone a few other tweaks recently. As Sam noted, the countdown has finally been updated; the one that counts to doom (final) is counting down to the precise start time of my own first final, while the GW finals study period actually begins 5-6 days before that. The blogrolls on the right have also been reorganized. I've updated the "must-see tv" category to more accurately reflect my most frequent reading patterns, and I've added a new section of blogs and other sites that I've found especially helpful in following the election. The many many more excellent blogs that I enjoy very much but can't visit every day can still be found on ai quick & dirty. Finally, down on the right there's a new section called "ai past posts at random." It's driven by the MT Most Visited plugin, and it's supposed to show the top 5-10 most visited posts on ai , but it's pretty obviously not working for some reason (I think the way my server puts logs into zip files is making it hard for the script to properly see all logs so it can know which posts have been visited the most). If you have any secrets for making this plugin work, please let me know.

Posted 05:26 AM | Comments (1) | meta-blogging