Summer Warmth, Interviewing, Shopping Bliss, and Good Reads

Hello, I'm back again. Finally! Excited for who knows what reason! Maybe b/c I finally found something to wear for my interviews Monday, because I've accepted my potentially impending death from the up-coming ankle surgery, and because I've found some great buys on clothing at the Nordstrom Rack. A great place to get reduced-price quality clothing. However, I miss my friends from law school and college more than ever. Summer is here and so many people are moving on to new stages of their lives, including myself, yet, we only seem to grow further apart with our changes in life rather than closer. Words can only close so many gaps, when finally the absence of their physical presence results in a gap to wide to be crossed safely and as securely again. Yet, always moving to different states hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away, we can only plan brief visits around our busy lives in an effort to retain our once sacred friendships. 

Oh yes. The interviews. It's not that I have exactly "gotten" an interview, so much as I am going to "impose" an interview upon my potential employers. It's always best to have the upper hand this way. They see your diligence and persistence at finding Them, and they get to see you at your best, when You have chosen to interview. This works especially well for me, since I am local, and most employers here appreciate hiring locals over others. Persistence is the key here. Confidence and persistence. As my Dad said, "There are many intelligent people out there, but the ones who get the jobs are not always the intelligent ones, but the persistent." I know this from personal experience. Despite my lack of experience in any of my previous positions my frequent calls and "drop-by" hellos resulting in many jobs for which I was qualified for, yet far from their "categorical choices", as you will see most employers have.  "Categorical choices" have included "friends of employees", "high school students", "working-class background", "cheery and stupid", "Jewish", "Cheery, bubbly, dumb type", "be-speckled English-major grammar Nazi type", "Corporate-demon-I'll-stab-you-with-my-high-heels-while-smiling-with red-frosted-lips type."

The last category, combined with the English major grammar Nazi is the one I'll most likely need for landing my legal internship. Confidence and clarity of voice, mind, and action, are key. No hesitation confidence. I know you'll love me confidence. You couldn't back down if you wanted to confidence. They know they want me.  

Well, enough of that for now. It's not that I think about law school ALL the time you know. It's really the theme of this blog, so it predominates here. My current reads include The Girls of Riyadh (inspiring me to write! The author published at 25, so, so can I!). Think by Simon Blackburn (a general review of "modern" philosophers and thought), I have the Right To Destroy Myself, Thai Cooking, and Learn Spanish in 30 Days. Ha. I have yet to finish the first page. And here, I thought I could discipline myself! These reads are good ones. Enjoy! P.S. Enjoy the weather too!

Coconut Cake, $8 Pool Admission, and My Cover Letter

One play directed and taped for Lis, one thesis paper written for Ellie, countless dinners made, and several National Geographic magazines and books on "How to Get The Legal Job of Your Dreams", frequent fits of nausea and "hick-town anxiety" later, and baking a Southern Coconut Layer Cake and learning belly dancing on tv to recover, and I'm very nearly no further to a productive summer than I was 2 weeks ago.  By the way, I'm doing all this because I'm getting ankle surgery in June, so I can't live my life in the city and take classes and work because the public transportation is inadequate and I usually bike to get around. So, I'm baking cakes in hicksville, USA. 

As per cover letters, I'm just going to walk around the town and tell firms they'll be missing out on great legal services if they don't hire me ASAP. Who doesn't like free help? Busy people, probably. Anyway, it's the persistent that win the jobs, not the potentially successful. Potential is nothing if not activated. 

Reading The Girls of Riyadh. It's written by this 25 year old author from Lebanon. My first reaction was: if she can do this, I can certainly do this! And she's an endodontist (gum surgery doctor)! 

So, tomorrow is the march around the town providing charitable legal services to law firms. Any tips on how to do this successfully besides, "Wear a suit" and bring copies of your resume and cover letter? There was actually a time where I had an interviewer with an employer from town, and he walked into the diner where we met for breakfast and stopped dead in his tracks at the hostess' podium when he saw me. I really didn't know I was that ugly. I mean, my blouse was a stylish black one from Gap with a bit of decorative frill down the buttons. It was conservative, sharp, and rather cute. Okay, not it's not Armani, but it wasn't Terrible. I mean, I got Two Other Jobs in the same blouse, so there was no excuse for his gawking look. But in five seconds he wished he had never made the appointment to eat breakfast with me at the diner. And I felt awful having to go through with it. He should have just informed me that he was no longer interested in doing the interview instead of sitting down. It ended up being a whole lot less like an interview, and a lot more like advice on what NOT to do. 

I'll get back to you on that advice. It escapes me now. Getting charitable work at the animal shelter.

Resume Down, Cover Letters To Go

So, I've transported myself half-way across the country for a change of scenery and a supposedly reduced sense of academia-associated anxiety to Chicago. No island vacation this is, with hyper sugar and video-game induced children halting every thought once permitted to begin. It may look something like this: "Today I am supposed to..." It very nearly stopped there. The panting of a dog, the turning pages of someone reading, the rustling of a child jumping into bed and screaming for the return of a stolen chocolate bar, and the scraping of a chair accompanied by a booming voice requesting quiet, occupy all the space once available for thought. Tell me again, so why have I arrived? I suppose to keep the overwhelming boiler pot of anxiety from occupying all crevases of my mind as I await my internship rejection notices, usually arriving one month too late for me to have considered work at all. All these distractions in fact distract from the worst: fear of rejection. 

However, my renewed attempts to seek the most basic resources have given me some hope. Trying the things you thought you already tried. Taking a second look. It was always staring you in the face. But if you actually read it now, the words take on new meaning. They make SENSE. Billions of experiences, successful and unsuccessful have brought me to this place. Surely there is someone out there who is doing this right. So, I have asked 4 different people to review my resume. I get similar responses from all. Stick to punctuation. It counts (and I thought that was for elementary schoolers?). Use one of the formats provided by your Law Carreer Services Center. They look more professional, even if you thought yours was perfect already. Write your cover letter as if you were writing about someone you admire. Positive active verbs are as attractive to employers as your envied classmates or ambitious friends are to you. Try a new format. Paragraph format resumes may be more appropriate if your jobs are not all-inclusive in the title (and none of them are!). My fellow students are my best resource. They usually have more patience than the law career service people (because the career service center is bored of this and sees many resumes), and they have done this very recently themselves. There are more of them. They have a broader range of interests and ambitions than the career services center. Choose them because they may understand. Put it in PDF format if you employer will accept it. This ensures that the format on your computer that you see will be the same one that they get (trust me, this counts!). Employers spend on average 10 Seconds looking at your resume! What are you going to put on there to impress them? They are obviously looking for someone to impress them with clarity, brevity, and a sure sign of success. Law review, a prestigious legal internship, Honors, Scholarships, great GPAs. Now is the time to impress. 

If you are afraid you don't have these to impress? Don't worry, chances are you have done much more than you thought. Start with action verbs, throw in some numbers, (e.g. edited and complied bibliography for 900 page college textbook. Completed within publisher's deadlines ontime or early). Compare to: edited and compiled bibliography for textbook. Implicit in all your descriptions should be evidence of time-management, multi-tasking, precision, efficiency, and success. The numbers and specificity in this description say that. However, now is not the time to write an essay on your life experiences. Stick to the basics. Also, if you have many experiences, leave out those jobs with non-office related work, or other experiences in which there is little with which to impress. Although you may think that your job as a juggler in central park might tie into multi-tasking, err on the side of Not assuming the employer will immediately make this connection, and leave it out (unless you don't have any other job experiences). The jack-of-all trades resume is more sloppy and indecisive than professional and polished. Stick to the legal and office-related work and emphasize your law school extra-curriculars if your pre-law school jobs make you appear shifty. Once again, err on the side of less rather than more and selective and discretionary.

Ah, sorry for the novella. Got caught up in the details of what has truly been a revelatory experience for me. Obviously there is much more, but visuals and personal commentary is always recommended when writing the resume. 

Later, I will tell you about the beach, the euphoria from which has remained with me since May 15. This is even better than the latter! 

Night.

To the Lolly-gager in Us All

Dear Reader, 

The job hunt (albeit late) has begun (again), and the ambiguities of, "I have absolutely no idea where I am going to be in a few hours or days," begins as well. Summer comes only once per year. It's quite brief, about 10 weeks, and if you lolly-gag, you are sure to have spent it unproductively, and worse, if you plan absolutely nothing, you end up hating doing nothing, as well, since you will be bored out of your mind when all the opportunities pass you by. Yes, I am usually classified as one of the vegetable-like of the human species when it comes to summer because I am always one thing: indecisive. Indecisiveness may be worse than a bit of rash or impulsiveness, since at least the impulsive person is getting some experience or doing Something during their summer, whereas the indecisive person (like me) is usually spending those three months pan-cake flat on her back in the moist shade of some darkened basement or bedroom waiting for classes to begin again in the fall. It is such morbid imagery, in fact. I might as well take a course, go to Europe, or work. Well, why not? It should look a little better on a resume than, "Survived an especially humid summer; steam-meditated on my back for three months." So, plan early, plan now, or, if you plan late, at least plan for the fall.  As the saying goes, "If you don't change, life will change you." 

The Summer Internship

Hello Again. The 1L, now 2L still exists, just in a slightly different realm, the antithesis of not being a law student. Yes, for now, I'm the guilty beach/ tv bum procrastinating and hoping that job/ interview does not find me first. Alas, woe to me, I might be a bitter sadder without it. So, why do they make students get legal experience the summer after their first year? Oh yeah, because law school doesn't kill us enough already. And oh yeah, because a silly law school experience couldn't possibly prep the law student for the law firm. Then why the H. go to law school if we spend all of our other time trying to get the right experiences and contacts to actually get a full time paying position when we graduate? In this paranormal world they are twisting us every which way. And in this paranormal world the degree is only half of the pie. I abstain. I abstain from jobs and interviews and resumes and cover-letters and internships and suits and searching websites and job-sites and career centers and making contacts. I have done more than my share. Let us never work. I'll write scholarly journals in my room and spend my afternoons on the beach for the rest of my life. Who could ask for more? p.s. to be in the legal field in any way shape or form, good legal experiences are always required. Too bad law schools won't do it for us. Signed, your Bitter Legal Accomplice 

Finals are Finally Over

Yes, and with the end of finals comes that ambivalent feeling of, "What should I be feeling"? Bad because there are not any more opportunities to prove myself, or good because I have finally accomplished something great? Great is the question. Only time will tell if last minute, 4 a.m. study sessions were ultimately more productive than hours making outlines and chugging through class notes and book facts. Yes, the devil is in the details. So, I threw out the details and went with pre-made outlines, skimmed cases and lots of practice exams, a focus on blackletter law, and of course handy review questions from review sessions. These came in most handy as they were on the exam itself! Getting a specific average is integral to doing well, so going below would spell a subtle type of doom, beginning as a tingling of nausea and overtime evolving into self-loathing and ultimately either...okay, so why predict the worst? Let's move on. All the practicalities of real-life that I've ignored for the past three weeks await me. And, omg, it's summer! Yes, a real-live summer. And it's mine!

Hi, yeah, I'm back again! I just couldn't wait to write again in my new blog. In the back of my mind I am thinking, "I have so much more to write; so much black space to fill." I am tingling with excitement. Yes, this is my second first blog. Second, because it's the second time I've started a blog, the first with reservation, the second with slightly more knowledge than I had oh, say, five years ago. So, I have decided this will be a blog that will center around my law school experiences and remincenses, since my public self is a law student (no saying what a nonpublic self is because arguably they are the same, but for my purposes here, I'm going to call it my public self). I'll post when there's something more public to write. Adieu.

My First Post

Hello, this is my first post in "Something Random". It comes at 3 a.m., about 18 hours before my last final exam begins, and the tell-tale exam grading and tooth grinding begins as I await my final exam scores. In July, the month of the greatest number of suicides, my birthday, and the height of boredom, arrives the information that defines the rest of my legal carreer, or should I say life, if I don't have a legal career? Anyway, as a famous law school blogger once pledged, "I will not take law school too seriously." This was my one big mistake. Never take anything too seriously, seriously. It doesn't do anyone any well. (Just felt like playing with "well", since as you'll find it's one of my favorite words to use). Well, I should get back to, or should I say, starting my studying. Happy reading!