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Nut Up or Shut Up*

Today was day #12 of my adventures as a DA. Although I did a short stint in the training division (minor traffic cases only) last summer, I started 2 weeks ago feeling rusty and like I definitely needed to find my footing again. Today I was finally starting to feel comfortable, like I finally was starting to get the hang of things. Then of course, in the usual fashion that is the chaos of my office, the chief of my division came and found me and told me that effective next week they are moving me back up to the main office to go into a regular misdemeanor docket to work with an attorney who has been with the office for about a year. I am beyond freaked out.

While it's flattering to be moved out of the training docket so quickly I really don't think I'm ready. I have practically no trial experience and although I did a ton of things as an intern I didn't learn how to effectively manage a docket because my job was primarily research and writing. Those are the things that I should be learning in the training docket, things that I haven't mastered yet.

All of the felony attorneys that I worked with as an intern think that it's fabulous that I'm "moving up" and that it's an accomplishment worthy of congratulations. But I see it differently. If I manage to survive and dare I say even do a good job in this docket it will look very good to the higher ups and could be good for future promotions. However, this is also a docket that has been known to chew people up and spit them out, if I'm not careful it could end in absolute disaster. It's literally a sink or swim scenario. I just hope I somehow manage to remember how to swim . . .

*For those of you who haven't seen Zombieland, go see it, it was hilarious, and once you see the movie the title of this post will make sense.

Full post as published by [ Useless Dicta ] on November 04, 2009 (boomark / email).