New Kid on the Hallway

The opposite of Schadenfreude?

It is sort of amazing to me how depressing it can be to find out who got a job you (okay, I) applied for and didn't get (for which you weren't even interviewed), even when 1) the person who got it is a friend, 2) the person who got it is eminently qualified (probably more than you are), and 3) you already have been offered, and accepted, what is, by many objective metrics, a "better" job.

Silly psyche.

(It's also sort of amazing that my iPhone knows how to autocomplete Schadenfreude...)

Why people take bar trips

So, there is this practice among law graduates of taking a bar trip, which is (pretty self-evidently) going on vacation somewhere immediately after taking the bar. I personally have a sort of problem with this concept, probably mostly because I'm kind of jealous of people going to cool places like Spain or Italy. But partly, I'm a little turned off the whole thing because it makes me think of the kind of spring break trips you take when you're in college (which I didn't really do when IN college, and definitely don't do now, although yes, I have classmates who went on spring break trips in law school). It honestly seems a little privileged, and outside my non-traditional experience of law school.* (No, I did not make the best friends of my life in law school, because law school just does not occupy that place in your life when you're 42. No, I did not go on trips over spring break. No, I'm not taking a bar trip.)

But now I have come to understand the wisdom of getting the hell out of Dodge and heading somewhere completely different right after the exam, because it would be a really effective way to really leave the exam behind you. Last night I dreamed that I had to come up with legal rules, and I'm exhausted but I can't turn my brain off or concentrate on anything fun, because I keep thinking I should be studying, and doing things like try to review the specific intent crimes in my head. I doubt I'd be doing that if I were in Rome or Jamaica right now.

*I really really don't mean this as a criticism of any individual who actually is taking a bar trip. Seriously, i hope everyone I know who's taking one has an awesome time, because you totally deserve it. Actually, I think what's really going on here is the fact that when you're a professor 1) the times when students get to travel on breaks are always times when you aspire to get a ton of work done, and 2) your "fun" travel is to conferences and archives, has left me a warped, bitter, resentful husk of a woman with regard to vacations. So please ignore my bile.

For symmetry's sake...

...I report on the second (LAST) day of the Bar. 

Today was 6 hours of multiple choice. Again, no idea how I did - some questions seemed easy, and then of course you overthink and wonder, "It can't really be THAT simple, can it?" and start to second-guess everything.

And then there was the point about a hour and a quarter from the end, where I could probably have put my head down on the table and gone to sleep. I keep having to reread stuff because I couldn't focus to save my life. I perked up again before the end, and I always have plenty of time left on the multiple choice (not that I necessarily get the right answers, I just read fast), so was able to review everything, but the last hour and a half was loooooooooong.

I won't even go into the concepts/doctrines that I had never even heard of, that BarBri didn't mention ONCE. They weren't even fake statements of law thrown into the answers to try to confuse you (advice from our BarBri lecturers: "It's Latin! You're going to want to pick that answer because it's Latin and that must mean it's right! But don't ever choose the Latin!"), because they were both referenced in the fact pattern. I'm just going to hope that no one else knew what they were, either. (I am currently refraining from looking these things up on the internet because I don't want to know, even though I do.)

Here was the really weird thing about the second day, though: I was actually really sad when it was over. Not the exam itself, of course - I counted down the last 20 seconds of the afternoon exam time with a big grin on my face. But this felt, finally, like the end of law school. I knew at graduation that I'd see people in bar review and at the exam itself, but now? Now it's REALLY over. I know for a lot of people, that's a good thing, but I liked law school; and I also just tend to find endings sad, even if they're giving way to good things. I was sad after my dissertation defense, too, just because it was the end. 

(I was also feeling really sorry for myself because everyone else seemed to be trooping off in groups to go celebrate being done, and I wasn't part of any of them, and I've kind of convinced myself that without actual school to bind us, none of my law school friends will have any interest in me anymore. Which is unfair to them and, if in any way true, my own fault. But reason is not really my strong suit at the end of two straight days of working my brain really hard.)

But whatever. I don't have to worry about this again until October (although I will, of course). And right I'm sitting up watching whatever TV strikes my fancy, JUST BECAUSE I CAN. (And because I'm too tired to leave the couch.)

One more day to normalcy

First day of the bar exam - check. Thank God I'm not taking it in a state with a three-day exam.

(For the non-lawyers out there: the first day of the exam, in my state, consists of 7 hours in which to write eight essays and two practice-skills tests, which are also essays, but longer, based on different stuff, and in a different format than the other eight essays. The second day is 7 hours of multiple choice questions. Aren't you sorry you didn't go into law?)

I wrote something for every essay, so that's something. It was a close shave for one subject, though, about which, it seems, I know pretty much nothing. Let me explain. No, there is too much - let me sum up. I rocked one essay (I think) and did pretty well on a second (though it got possibly a little over-involved). I'm pretty sure I identified all the relevant issues and made a reasonable stab at applying relevant rules on two more of the subjects. I wrote enough on the fifth and sixth essays to get some points, at least, and threw around a bunch of semi-relevant vocabulary on number seven. And then the last subject - well, I really did stare at the question for quite a long time, write about two sentences on each of the three parts, and call it a day. 

I would be panicking about knowing nothing about that last question (and am, somewhat), except that it's impossible to know how you did because you don't know how anyone else did. My state grades essays with a checklist and you get a point for everything you mention that they wanted/expected you to mention. So a given essay might be worth a potential maximum of, say, sixteen points. But the scores are then scaled, so if 95% of the test takers don't earn more than seven points, the earner of eight points is king. BarBri graded our practice essays by telling us both how many points we got, and what the mean score on the question was when it was given on the bar exam. Which is all very good and helpful and whatnot - if you're consistently getting way below the mean on the actual exam, that's probably a bad sign. That said, it doesn't give you much of a basis for evaluating your performance on the actual day.

(I have mostly managed to avoid post-portem-ing the actual questions, though I think a lot of people struggled with at least one of the questions I struggled with. And one of my classmates asked, "What was the deal with the [subject X] essay?" - to which I thought, how the hell do I answer this without one of us coming away from the conversation feeling awful?)

I think I did okay on the practice-skills tests, except that (as this post amply demonstrates) my default writing style is sort of rambling and expansive with convoluted sentences. In real life, I just edit that stuff out, but the time contrainsts of exams don't always let you do that. Plus, by the end of seven hours I was kinda fried, so I'm not sure how coherent I was at the last. (Some people get terse when they're tired - I get chatty.) 

Still, the goal is minimum competency, right? I'm thinking that my practice-skills tests were at least minimally competent. I seriously hope so, anyway. Essays? No idea.

So, yeah, I could have completely failed. Or not. I just can't know, and won't know until October. (Poor NLLDH - he thought results came out in August, and was horrified to find out we'll be in suspense until October.) 

The only consolation if I fail is that I feel like now, I have a MUCH better idea of what I should be doing and how I would more effectively study. It's sort of like how you feel after your first semester of exams - okay, that's what a law school final is like; now I know what it is, now I understand what I need to do next time. Now that I've taken (the first half) of a bar exam, I have a much better sense of what it entails and what I would need to do. (It's like the woman who was behind me in the line for the water fountain said to someone else: "Once you've done one bar exam, the next is much easier." Which isn't to say that it's ever EASY, of course. Not trying to suggest that at all! It's all relative.)

But anyway. Let's hope that if I do understand better, now, how to study for this exam, it's knowledge I never have to apply.

All consuming

I just semi-turned down* an invitation for a social thing this weekend, even though it's with a bunch of people that I like a lot, doing exactly the kind of low-key social hanging-out that I like the best (that is, NOT centered around drinking, bars, or late nights).

Why? BECAUSE I AM TRAPPED IN THE BARZAM AND I CAN'T GET OUT.

I mean, seriously, it's not even that I want to go but don't think I should because I should be studying. I know I can only study for so long, the occasional break is good for you, it's not like I'd have to stay out late, etc. etc. Going out for a few hours one evening is not going to make or break me.

It's more like right now, I can't even IMAGINE sitting in a room of cool people (who are NOT taking the Bar) and thinking about something OTHER than the Bar. It's not that I WANT to think about the Bar all the time; I just. can't. help it. It's like I've entered a damn cult or something.

I can hang out with other Bar-takers, because we're all in the same place; we all know what each other is going through; we're all living in the same country right now. But people who live somewhere else, who've never visited - I don't know, I just don't think they can get where I'm at. (Which is not their fault - they have no reason to know this country. It's just a gulf between us right now.)

More to the point, I do not wish to inflict myself on them! Because, my friends, studying for the Bar? Is really, really BORING. Real law is interesting; the Bar is duller than fuck. So I can only imagine how much fun it would be for my non-Bar friends to hang out with someone who can think about nothing but the world's dullest subject. I really like all the people involved, and don't want them to think I don't want to hang out with them; but I also don't want to expose them to Me, Barzam Edition. 

*I said maybe, so that if I get some kind of freak burst of sociability that evening, I could buy some chips and head on over. But I doubt that's going to happen. 

Abritrariness*

So, if you follow me on Twitter you know I got a job offer the other day (if you don't follow me on Twitter, don't worry, you're not missing anything. And guess what! I got a job offer the other day!). 

Which is all very exciting, and I'm very pleased, but I continue to be amazed/amused at how arbitrary hiring can be. People who like my resume REALLY like my resume, and seem to want to interview me just to make sure I'm not some kind of troll or antisocial freak, because they seem determined to hire me unless I suck in person. And let's be honest - they like my Ph.D. They look at the Ph.D. and think, "OOoooh! She can research and write and will do so without complaint! Snatch her up!" 

On the one hand, this is perfectly great. I am happy to trade on whatever employment capital having a Ph.D. gives me. On the other hand, it feels a little bizarre when legal employers consider a history Ph.D. "impressive." It's true that the Ph.D. is a proxy for some academic ability (and discipline/perseverance, although really, if I were truly disciplined, I would have taken less time to get the damn degree!). But it is by no means an accurate proxy for legal brilliance or competence. Having a Ph.D. does not guarantee law school success, and while I've been a fairly successful student, I'm not at a super-top-elite school, and I'm not at the top of my class. I haven't set the legal world on fire.

And the fact is, many employers are perfectly aware of this. Given their lack of response, it seems clear they look at my resume and think, ""Law school record good but not completely outstanding. Oh, and she's done some other stuff. That's nice. Pass." This is the case even with lots of employers who say they really really value research and writing. 

Anyway, I originally started this post a few days ago, and I've been wondering why I find this so baffling, this contrast between people who want to hire me and people who don't. Lord knows that academic job applications are similarly arbitrary, in that they're all about "fit" - there are a lot of things that a given employer will want in an applicant that won't necessarily make their way into a job ad, and so even if you have all the specified qualifications, someone else may just "fit" the job better (maybe they attended a similar school for undergrad and you didn't. Maybe they taught high school before going to grad school so can guide the department's education program, and you didn't. Maybe they don't overlap with the department star's research interests and you do, or maybe they do, and you don't. Maybe they match the hiring chair's image of "ideal" candidate in race, gender, age, persona, whatever, and you can't). I don't even think "fit" is necessarily a bad thing. It's frustrating for job candidates, because you can never really know what a search committee is looking for, but it's inevitable that a department will have preferences and desires you can't know (and can't meet, because it's impossible to be everything to everyone). 

What I just realized today is that I find law hiring baffling because somewhere in my subconscious I still believe that there is a "right" way to do things, and that if you do things the "right" way, certain identifiable results (jobs/opportunities) will follow. I have, of course, tried to do as many things "right" as I can (though I have not done all the right things, like be in the top 10% of my class), so I keep thinking I should be able to predict the results that ensue. In fact, I think I find the employers who want to hire me (at least in part) because of my Ph.D. more baffling than employers who don't, because hiring me (at least in part) for my Ph.D. feels like not hiring me for doing the "right" things. 

I have no idea why I think this about law when I think I got over this about academia. Maybe it suggests that there really is (or I think there is) a more-defined accepted path that one is "supposed" to follow for academic success? And that law is just enough broader than academia that you can't target the "right" things as easily? I don't know. Maybe it's just that I'd been in academia long enough that I did become able to predict how a given employer was likely to react to my application - I could parse the different cultures/requirements at different schools well enough to know how I'd look as a candidate, and I haven't been in law long enough to figure that out. 

Anyway. It's just kind of weird, and kind of frustrating in that I'm not very good at predicting who will think I'm qualified, and who won't. That's an important job-hunting skill that I'm still developing. But hey! I got a job anyway. 

*I really wanted to call this "arbitration," except of course that means something else entirely. It just feels like there should be a better noun to mean "something that is arbitrary."