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Full Circle

If you had told me four years ago that the most major academic assignment I had ever worked on at that point in my life would one day possibly open the door to the job that I didn't even know I wanted as an undergrad I would have thought you had gone nuts. And yet, ironically, that is exactly what has happened.

A day after what I thought was a craptacular interview took place, I sent an email to the elected DA thanking her for her time meeting with me and I attached an electronic copy of my resume for her reference. Over the weekend she sent me an email asking me about my senior thesis from undergrad and wondering if I would share a copy of it with her. This kind of caught me by surprise. I've been asked about my thesis since going to law school because it is listed on my resume, but no one has ever asked to actually read it. I spent a good hour or so reading it over to make sure that there were no glaring or embarrassing errors. To my surprise, my thesis for the most part was pretty damn good. There are definitely some things that I would change if I was doing it all over again, and there is some editing that could be done to make it better, but overall it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. (I literally have not read a word of what I wrote since I turned my thesis in 3 years ago because the process of writing it was so draining that by the time I was done I couldn't spend one more moment looking at it for editing).

After reading it over I went ahead and sent a copy of it to the elected DA (who is pretty much the sole person responsible for hiring in my district). Within 30 minutes of me sending it to her today she emailed back, said that she was very interested in the topic, had been for some time, and would love to discuss it, along with several other more prosecutor related things over lunch if I was up for it.

OMG. This is a big deal. A HUGE deal. Countless previous interns have gone to "talk" or "interview" with the elected DA only to be given about 5-10 minutes of her time before being ushered out of the office with a laundry list of things they need to do to be considered for hiring. I suddenly landed a 2 hour slot on her calendar two weeks from now in a less formal more friendly type of setting and it's all because I apparently did something BEFORE law school that has sparked her interest. I find it totally ironic that the one project that I devoted almost 2 years of my pre-law school life to could possibly open the door to the job I'd love to have after the roller coaster 3 years of law school.

And so that's how everything has come full circle. The past 48 hours have been remarkable to say the least. Re-reading my thesis and mulling over the questions that have been posed to me in advance of the lunch in a couple of weeks has quite possibly been the best break from law school I've had since I first started. I was starting to think that I had lost all ability to engage in intelligent thought and conversation outside of the rigid structures that the law requires us to operate under. Even if I don't end up with a job offer at the end of all of this, I'm thankful that this process has at least reminded me that I am absolutely capable of intelligent thought in areas not defined by black letter rules and statutes.

Full post as published by [ Useless Dicta ] on April 21, 2009 (boomark / email).