divine angst

So remember when I made this? I finally got around to taking some photos!

This is served with green beans (simmer, covered, in water with some salt and butter until soft) and risotto-style orzo (toast 3/4 cup orzo in a tablespoon of olive oil, then add 1 can of chicken broth a bit at a time until fully absorbed and orzo is soft and creamy; finish with a squirt or two of lemon juice to cut the chickeny flavor).

Not too shabby for a Sunday night dinner. Mmmmmm.

Welcome to this week’s Law School Roundup! There’s no particular theme this week, because I have a stuffy nose and a full plate. So just take these for what they are worth, all on their own.

• Buy more pink! It’s Breast Cancer Month! (Lunching with Lions)
• But use the pink appropriately. (My So-Called Internet-based Life)
• Or maybe just avoid the need for pens and highlighters? (parens binubus)
• It might pay off… (Law & Alcoholism - A Theory of Jurishprudensh)
• If not, there are other ways to get a job. (La Mitotera)
• Just be sure to take care of yourself. (Magic Cookie)
• And ask for advice. (Transmogriflaw)
• Don’t do your homework at night. (Cella Bellum)
• Or at all. (The Namby Pamby)
• Read the signals right. (Think like a Woman. Act like a Man.)
• But don’t get paranoid. (Peanut Butter Burrito)
• And celebrate when appropriate! (Will Work for Favorable Dicta)

And that’s it for this week’s Roundup! Look for it next week at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground, and then back here in two weeks.

I am sick.

This is not fun. Today, for instance, I am working on about three hours of sleep, since I couldn’t sleep last night, but all I’ve really felt up to doing is laying around and psuedo-napping. (And watching football…Boomer Sooner my tushy. That was a pretty sweet game.)

Combine my being sick with the lack of stuff going on that I feel comfortable writing about, and you start to get a lack of posting. I’m actually sort of fighting with this lately–how much am I willing to write about, am I being too cautious, am I staying quiet without good reason? Some things it’s clear I CAN’T write about–work I’m doing in my externship, for instance–and some things I’m wary of writing about–like, making decisions about my summer employment. Even classes, which are going well, aren’t providing me all that much to write about, since I’m just sort of keeping up lately.

So, sigh. That’s me right now. Sick and stumped.

Children, I would just like to point out–proudly–that I have cooked three nights out of four this week. And I may cook again tonight.

This is record-setting, at least this semester.

Just so you know what I’ve made:

Monday: Pan-Roasted Chicken Breasts, Sauteed Green Beans with Lemon, and Cous-Cous

Tuesday: Roasted Acorn Squash and Asparagus (I ate no meat; Mr. Angst had some leftover pork tenderloin)

Wednesday: Baked Pork Chops, Egg Noodles with Marinara, and Steamed Broccoli

So, nothing dramatically exciting, just good home-cooked meals, the kind you grew up on. Or at least the kind I grew up on. It feels good.

I walked outside this morning to discover that it is fall. Yellow, paper-rustling leaves covered the sidewalk, the sky was grey with hints of blue peeking through, and the wind–barely more than a breeze–carried a slight chill.

It is, after all, October. I should not, therefore, be surprised to see the trees turning or find the mornings darker than usual when I’m out walking Himself. But I am. I am always surprised by autumn–and no more so than this year, coming on the heels of a delightfully fresh Indian summer.

When I did I become cynical again? I did so well over the summer, getting back to myself, my optimistic self. Now, though…I find myself doubting everyone’s motives, mentally cursing what I see as busywork, and just generally turning into a crabby, bitchy person.

Maybe I just need more sleep.

C’s last question was whether my professors know I blog. The answer is short: I don’t know. No idea. And I don’t really want to know. I’ve said before that I’m not really anonymous, just “googlenonymous,” so it’s entirely possible that some of my profs know I blog. Of course, they’d also have to know who I am in real life, and I think I fly under the radar. Maybe?

Andrea also asked a question about food, and it was so hard I left it for last, and now I don’t think I can answer it. Because it would make me too hungry. I mean, I did eat dinner already, but it would still make me too hungry. And it would make me sad, because Andrea wanted me to list the three meals I would eat every day for the rest of my life, if I couldn’t eat any other meals but those three, and I love food too much to even contemplate being gustatorily restricted like that. I think I’ll cop out, then, by saying that for breakfast, I’d eat eggs of some variety with some variety of potato and a bread of some kind. For lunch, I’d have some lean protein and some green leafy vegetables. And for dinner, I’d have steak. If I could eat steak every night without dying young of a heart attack. And with the steak, a starch and a vegetable and a dessert. Or fruit. And maybe some red wine. Just one glass.

And that’s the end of the All Request Weekend. Until the next one!

C also asked about how my job search is going. (C had LOTS of questions in this All Request Weekend thing, but that’s OK, because the four questions C asked are all good ones.)

Some of you may have guessed that the very reason I asked for requests was because I could not (or would not) blog about my job search. Those of you who guessed that way are very smart because, indeed, I have MANY things I could be writing about in relation to my job search, but I am unwilling to actually write–and post–them.

But I will say a few things, generic things, about OCI and job searching.

First, one of the most important things I did was spend some time on my resume and get some good feedback. I ended up getting great feedback first from Mr. Angst and later from a great Career Services advisor. If you don’t have a spouse or a great Career Services advisor, find someone else–a professor, maybe, or someone you trust who isn’t a law student. Law students don’t have enough distance to give each other good advice.

Second, another important thing I did was prepare for interviews. Which isn’t to say I necessarily did oodles of research before my interviews. Instead, I did whatever I needed to on a given day to be ready to, essentially, schmooze for 20 to 30 minutes. And I attribute whatever success I had from OCI to this, because my ability to talk comfortably to any number of people about any number of things apparently went over well. Interviewing well means people will want to think about working with you. And this is a good thing, if you’re talking to that person because you want a job with them.

Finally, neither of the above things means anything in the grand scheme of things. Because in large part, I believe law firms (who are the only employers I have experience with) are looking for certain metrics and if they don’t see them in your transcript, having a well-prepared resume and being a good interviewee really won’t matter. And that, frankly, sucks. Because law students, in general, have all worked hard to get where they are and being cut off from showing their worth on the basis of some numbers/letters is really stupid. I wish there were solutions to that, too, and there may be, but I am not smart enough to come up with them.

And that’s all I’m going to say about OCI. I did not have a bad OCI experience, and I feel very lucky to be in the position I am right now. I know a lot of my friends are still interviewing and I am not, and I feel lucky in that respect, too–interviewing takes a lot of time and energy. By the same token, I do wonder how much of my current situation is related to my unwillingness to have too many choices and therefore cutting many opportunities off early so I wouldn’t have to possibly have them as options.

And it’s another All Request Weekend post.

C asks, “How do you manage with having (what I imagine to be because it is for my husband and I) such a different schedule from your husband’s? Do you try to treat law school like a job so you’re around when he’s home?”

So, for starters, Mr. Angst is also in school, which has it’s plusses and its minuses. The plusses are that both of us are more or less on the same academic calendar, at least in the fall, and so we tend to be very considerate of one another when things get busy or stressful. Also, because his classes are at night and mine are during the day, we can pretty much work it so the dog is only alone for about six hours a day, total. (That’s THIS semester’s schedule. No clue how next semester is going to work.)

The minuses are that he is in class at night, which means I don’t see him three nights a week. Other minuses include that he is on quarters, so the spring gets really funky when he’s got exams during my spring break, etc. The last big minus is that neither of us is working more than a few hours a week, so we are broke.

I had always intended to treat law school like a job–the 8-to-5 thing–and have more or less been able to do that. More or less. This year it’s more difficult. I am actually on campus from about 9:30 to 4 three days a week, but all of that time is packed full, so I don’t necessarily get a lot done in terms of reading, paper writing, etc. I have to rush around to the library to pick up printouts, check out books, do source-and-cite assignments, all within about a one hour window each day that I’m on campus. So that sort of sucks about this semester. And it’s basically that way because I’m just really oversubscribed with stuff. Thankfully, I’m done with my interviewing (but that’s another post), so the end of my week has really opened up since I don’t have callbacks to schedule. Of course, I do have hours to do for my judge, so it’s not like I have two free days a week or anything.

That’s a lot of detail to answer a pretty simple question, so I guess the pretty simple answer is that we manage the best we can. This semester–and I think year–are going to be much harder than last year. Mr. Angst’s classes are getting more difficult as he nears the end of his degree program, my schedule as a 2L is completely insane, and–oh, yes–we got a dog this summer. All of those things at once means we are stretched really thin. So we’re just trying to hold on and get through it, and not lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. Life has its ups and downs lately, more so than ever before, I think. But we’re coping.