Networking

I'm trying to learn how to network. I'm making lunch dates with contacts I've made through career fairs and trying to reach out to new people. I'm really struggling with it though. It feels foreign and forced. When you get to law school, you think, if I just work really hard, I'll get somewhere based on my merit. Once you're there, you realize it really is who you know - or, at the very least, how you come off when you meet them.

2L Year

Despite my current unemployment situation, I think I need to remind myself of all the things I did accomplish this past year - the most stressful, but the most rewarding, of my life thus far. Lists are always good.

- Competed in the regionals of a national moot court competition (National Appellate Advocacy Competition)
- Ran for and was elected to Executive Editor of the Oregon Law Review Managing Board
- Organized a speaker series on Women and Money for the Women's Law Forum
- Worked part-time at the Department of Justice the whole year
- Helped organize both the spring and regional ADR competitions
- Took a nearly full load each semester

Despite my current frustrations, I can at least be proud of what I was able to do these last nine months, if not these current three.

Seattle

I'm back in Seattle for the summer to be with my man. I left a job where I was well liked and good at what I did to come up here in the hopes of finding something in the ways of employment or volunteering. I found out the day before I left I didn't get the judicial externship I had gone out for due to extenuating circumstances - the judge would have hired me, but because one of her colleagues had switched dockets and couldn't accomodate an extern but had already promised an extern a position, my judge had to take that extern instead of me.

I've been here a week and had zero luck. I've applied to many different places and tapped out many of my contacts. Its looking like a summer full of lunches with networking leads that don't actually go anywhere, but might be good for the future. It is always good to meet people, but it doesn't do much to help the situation now. I do have a potential volunteering gig with Lambda Legal lined up if nothing else pans out, and for that I am very grateful. But that gig is only if nothing else pans out, because it wouldn't be very much work - certainly not enough to fill a whole summer's worth. I worked my tail off this past year to make sure that I wouldn't end up in this situation again, to have the kind of resume I could proudly push across a desk, and yet here I am, jobless, with not even a full-time volunteer position, and without any leads. And housewifery just isn't for me - I already feel as though I have cabin fever, and there's a sink full of dishes I'm dreading doing. I really don't want to take summer school again and I really don't want to be a research assistant again, but it looks as though I might not have a choice.

Finals

I have a paper due tomorrow. It's up to twenty-five pages and it still isn't done. I've been working on it for months, and yet it still isn't done. Why do I always do this to myself? It's not like procrastination is an uncommon problem but you think we would start teaching ourselves ways to avoid it. For example, I'm blogging right now when I should be working on my paper. Yet another tool encouraging procrastination, not discouraging it. After that, I have a final on Wednesday, a final on Friday, a week of work, packing my apartment, and then back up to Seattle. I'm ready to go now. These just feel like the details in between.