As you may know, I started with my company as a temp at the
front desk. Within three months
they had hired me as a permanent employee, but then I was locked into that
position for a year. I finally
moved into a new position the beginning of this year, and I’m still getting
used to the novel idea of working (and not messing about in NASA’s various Flickr Photostreams) during work
hours.
One of our regular receptionists is currently away on her
honeymoon, so they brought in a temp.
I’ve had several people tell me that I started a run of over educated
people working at the front desk, because this temp also has his JD.
When I was at the front desk, I was a little embarrassed by
the fact that I had my JD and I was doing an administrative job.* No matter how bad I felt for myself, I
feel a little worse for this guy.
He graduated from law school in 2010 after being kicked out
for a term (his grades slipped below the minimum average), passed the bar in
the spring of 2011, but didn’t pass the ethics portion of the bar (it’s a
separate test that most people take during law school) until this year, so he’s
been licensed to practice for about four months now. Since then he’s had one legal job interview, so he’s seriously
considering teaching English in South Korea for the next year or two – like his
brother – just to have a job to start paying down his student loans.
I had never spoken to this guy before today, and I learned
all of this in about ten minutes.
He may just be an over sharer or I may just be a great listener, but I
couldn’t help but think of the two times that I’ve seriously over shared with
people who are barely acquaintances.^
I remember the tidal waves of frustration, anger, despair, and
disbelief. I don’t miss those days.
If I’ve done the math correctly, this guy is two years
younger than I. However, he seems
so, so young and I do not envy the major life changing decisions he’s about to
make.
*I wasn’t embarrassed about the work or think it was below
me. (Dreams and moonbeams weren’t
going to pay my bills…) However, I
was embarrassed by what I assumed other people thought of me.
^Number one was during undergrad. I was working at 7-Eleven and the TA from one of my
photography classes came in and made the mistake of asking me how I was
doing. I unloaded on him. My dad had had a stroke two months
earlier, and was still hospitalized.
I was supposed to study abroad in Greece and had already invested
thousands of my Slurpee pouring, hotdog selling, and beer hawking money into
what was supposed to be my first grand adventure. I was torn between going and staying.
Law school ushered in number two. While sitting by myself in the student lounge area, my
socially awkward Legal Research TA happened upon me. He made the mistake of asking how I was doing, and the
floodgates opened. I had just
moved over 3,000 miles to the opposite coast. I had gone from urban Portland, Oregon to rural Concord, New
Hampshire. My law school (Franklin
Pierce Law Center, which is now University of New Hampshire School of Law) was
one of the only two stand alone law schools in the nation (the other is the
John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois, which is now the last stand
alone school. Anyway, there were
only about 350 students in my entire school between the JD and graduate
programs. I hated most of my
classes. The one class that I was
pumped to take – Legal Writing – was crushing my will to live. I hadn’t made any real friends, and I
was SO sexually frustrated. Again,
I was torn between going and staying.
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