"You have an interesting resume."

Generally speaking, I wouldn't be too thrilled if somebody used the adjective "interesting" in the manner above, since it's often a word that means "I don't know what bad thing to say about it" or "I'm being too polite to say this sucks" so I was kind of concerned the first time I got the above in response to a job application. But it was repeated a few times this week as I was talking with attorneys at different firms, and I think at least most of them actually meant it in a positive way.

I'd managed to delay any concern about the whole job search thing through Christmas, but the day after Christmas it hit with a vengeance, and basically on a whim I spent that entire Monday, well into the evening, and all of the next day as well, reading up on the web about different firms (on dial-up, at that point), writing cover letters and resumes, printing out writing samples, and sending them out. They went out on Tuesday, and to my amazement, on Thursday and Friday I got four responses wanting to set up interviews; on the following Tuesday I got a fifth response. I didn't want to take time away from Rob's visit to interview, so I set them all up for this week. Five interviews in 3 days in St. Louis, then Kansas City, then St. Louis again. Each "interview" was actually 4-5 interviews with different attorneys, so all told I met with ~18 people for a total actual interview time of about 11 hours in 3 days. And I was driving 5 hours each day. UGG!!

So much for the statistics. To sum it up, I have one job offer, two interviews that I felt fairly good about, one that was so-so, and one that was pretty bad. As a sampling of the bad interview, I screwed up the name of the firm and said "Spencer Fane" when I was interviewing at Polsinelli - twice. I caught myself right away and corrected and apologized, but it kind of flustered me. Anyway, the job offer is sort of a mixed bag of good and bad. The good side is it is with a 2 person immigration firm in St. Louis and it sounds like I would be getting incredible experience, since they plan on throwing me right in to writing pleadings and even client contact, if I show the aptitude. The bad side is that it would be unpaid. Mitigating that, Cornell has grants for public interest work; the money is guaranteed as long as you are with a qualifying entity. It's about a quarter of what I would get paid at a larger firm, but it's work I'm interested in. On the other hand, if I landed one of the large firm jobs (the other four interviews) I would be getting about $15-16K for 10 weeks work, which would make a HUGE dent in my credit card bills (especially if I was living with family in St. Louis rent free) . And getting rid of some or all of the credit card debt would mean it would be easier for me to take a public interest job the following summer.

But in the end, I'm not sure how it's all going to work out. I may not get offers from any of these firms; they have very limited 1L spots and are going to be cautious about extending one of them to somebody who has lived out east for 6 years because they want somebody who is going to return to Missouri after graduation.

In fact, for some reason I seem to be having a much more "let it be" attitude toward this job search. I applied to the FBI in D.C. and applied for an internship in Japan; after applying I realized there are some reasons like my sister Andrea being pregnant and due in July and a friend maybe getting married this summer that would make it good for me to be back in MO this summer. But I put a good faith effort into both FBI and Japan and got turned down for both. I wasn't too disappointed - it kind of seemed like it wasn't meant to be, given the afore mentioned reasons for being in MO. For some reason, throughout the application and interview process of the past couple weeks, I've had a very strong sense that this is something to be left in the hands of God, as my mother would say. I'm putting forth my best faith effort to get all these jobs - I'm even writing thank you notes for pete's sakes - and I have this strong sense of trust that when it comes time I'll see my way clearly, and it won't because I only actually ever had one option.

That was the thing that surprised me when I was writing my cover letters. I've always had to BS them before and because I felt like I had nothing concrete to offer but for the first time ever I felt like the skills I have were directly applicable to the job I was applying for, and I could give concrete examples of how I acquired and used them. And it wasn't just stuff from law school by any means, although that was the clinch pin. Going all the way back to my internship in D.C. it seems like all this stuff I've been doing has been preparing me for this.

And on top of that, I got a 3.7 GPA for my first semester of law school. So all told, while I'm not complacent, I'm feeling like I'm on the right track in my life.