New Kid on the Hallway

Sort of a New Year's Post, but not really

I have been trying to write a New Year's post for almost a week now, and I keep abandoning it. I guess that just proves one of the points I keep trying to make in said abandoned posts, that January 1 just doesn't really feel like a new year to me - I've been on the academic schedule too long to think of anything other than the end of August/beginning of September as the beginning of the year. I'm sure I will get weaned off of this eventually, but not this past year, when I moved and started a new job in August, nor this coming year, when I will do the same in (probably) September.

I have two specific goals for the year, and neither have to do with work (although I do want to succeed in my current job and survive my new one. But those are far too ongoing and all-encompassing really to be resolutions in any way).

First, I want to KNIT A SWEATER THAT ACTUALLY FITS AND LOOKS DECENT. I keep starting sweaters and abandoning them once I realize the size is wrong, or the yarn doesn't fit the pattern, or the pattern is going to look horrible on me. I have one sweater about 1/2 done right now that looks really, really promising - I tried on the part I've managed to accomplish, and it fits! and looks like a sweater! and is comfortable! (It's also looking very very green - almost nuclearly green. But I'm ignoring that part).

The thing about knitting, for me, is that I enjoy the process, but I also really really want to possess whatever object it is I'm creating. I want to make STUFF for ME that I will use and enjoy. But I keep moving to warmer and warmer climes. I'm moving to a state that has had a streak of 39 days in a row above 100 degrees, and where the average lows in December and January are about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. There isn't a lot of point in making hats or cold-weather scarves or gloves and mittens or blankets and the like. So if we're talking stuff I would actually use, we're left with sweaters(non-wool sweaters, mostly - light cardis, short sleeves, but sweaters). Which kind of rules out quick/instant gratification knitting, and puts me in the land of long-term projects.

BUT THIS YEAR I WILL FINISH ONE DAMMIT.

My second goal is to GET A BIKE AND LEARN HOW TO USE IT PROPERLY. I'm less wound up about this one right now, since it's freezing and there's snow on the ground here right now and it gets dark by 5:30 pm. But where I live now is a cyclist's paradise, and where I'm moving to is even better, and ever since getting into spin, I have really envied all the cyclists I see on the trails by mountains where I live. So I would really love to do this at some point in the next year.

(Of course, it's probably been a solid decade since I've been on a bike that actually transports you somewhere, and I'm kinda terrified of crashing. So I think I'm going to be true to the total over-educated wimp I am and take a bike-handling class.)

So those are my goals - the fun ones, the ones I've chosen and am excited about. As I mentioned, I also want to succeed in my current job and survive the first few months of my new one (which kinda scares me, but that's good for you, right?). But those don't really feel like things I'm choosing to do - they just go with the territory. Does anyone really not want to succeed in their job? I'm sure even the people who don't care about their jobs would nonetheless prefer not to fail. (Unless you hate your job so much you want to do such a bad job that you get fired, but even that's a goal.)

This is preying on my mind a little right now because I'm behind at work and a little terrified I'm not going to get certain stuff done by the time it needs to get done. But I have to remind myself the work does always get done - I may have to stay late and run on little sleep for a while, but it gets done - when I was teaching, the semester always did, eventually, pass; here, the cases will pass, too. I guess what I really mean is that I dread the next couple of weeks. For which there's no one to blame besides myself! (Which doesn't actually make me feel any better, but is useful to remember.) (I'm behind in part because I engaged in a fairly intense job search in October and November, and I got in a very bad habit of letting that distract me. So time to focus again, which I've been doing successfully, but I still have to pay for my sins.)

It doesn't help that I spent almost two weeks at home with LDH over the holiday, and now I have to adjust to being here on my own again. It's nice here and all, but I find myself staying up till all hours of the night - even on work nights - which is my classic "LDH isn't here" thing to do, and I have to stop (I was kind of zombified for the short work week, even after sleeping tons over the holiday, because I refused to go to bed when I need to). And I've also spent too much money on clothes - I can't resist the post-holiday sales. Everything I've bought has been from 40-60% off full price, but, yeah, that excuse only goes so far. (I should add that I'm shopping online so none of this has arrived yet, and I have no intention of actually keeping everything, because most of it probably won't work on me anyway. But the amount of stuff winging its way towards me is still freaking me out a little. As if it's just magically happened without me playing a part...)

So, staying up late and spending money: two classic signs of anxiety and depression in my world. Which means it's time to get back to the gym (me and all the resolute hordes), as well as do other stuff that takes me out of my own head. I'm nearly done with training to volunteer at the humane society here, so I need to get that done so I can be scheduled for a regular shift and get some kitteh cuddle therapy. And I've signed up for a Spanish class that starts a week from Monday, which I'm excited about - both to learn the language, and to interact regularly with people I DON'T work with. (I really like everyone I work with, but apart from my hairdresser, and the guy who teaches my spin classes, they're about the only people I ever talk to.)

Here's my awful confession about Spanish, though: I am not really expecting to have to work very hard, since I've taken French, Italian, and Latin, and when I look at written Spanish I can pretty much parse the sentence structure - identify the verbs/nouns/adjectives, that kind of thing. And I can get an awful lot of the vocabulary, too.That said, I can't speak a damn thing besides English, nor can I understand word one of spoken Spanish. And this time round, I'm taking the language because I really really want to be able to speak it. So I also suspect at some point I'm going to hit a cinderblock wall and suffer a rude awakening about how much work it requires. But it will be good for me.

Anyway. Not sure how I really got to this point, as this isn't what I intended to talk about when I started this post. As you can see, the whole New Year's post thing clearly isn't working for me. But I will stop here, because otherwise it will be June before I manage to say anything about the New Year.

* * * * *

As an aside, I wanted to thank you all so much for your sweet comments on my previous post about Middle Cat. They are all immensely appreciated.

 

Sleep well, sweetheart

We followed a path yesterday that we've followed twice before, but it never gets any easier: we put one of our cats to sleep.

Middle Cat, who was born sometime in May 1992, has been suffering from a number of chronic illnesses for some years now. First it was hyperthyroidism, then renal failure, then last January she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and this fall the vets discovered a multi-lobe mass on her liver. Any one of these would have finished off a lesser cat, but as our vet put it, Middle Cat was too stubborn to die, and so she hung around, getting skinnier and skinnier but still enjoying life. She slept 90% of the time, but she was always eager for her food and slept on the bed with us at night. She was particularly fond of sitting on LDH's chest and breathing in his face. 

But Friday night she vomited a few times, clear liquid flecked with blood. She wasn't interested in her favorite treats, freeze-dried chicken. She just seemed tired.

So we took her to the vet on Saturday morning and after consultation decided that now was the time.

It's such a hard decision. On the one hand, I always wish that they would take the choice out of our hands, that we'd wake up one morning and find the still, cool little body of a creature that had passed peacefully in her sleep. On the other hand, as the vet put it, this is the one thing we can do for her - give her an end without pain, surrounded by the people who loved her. 

There are always things to second-guess - for instance, in this case, our vets would be closed Sunday through Tuesday. And I go back to clerkship town on Tuesday. You don't want to arrange something like this around a holiday and the convenience that I'm here right now. But we love our vets, who have never displayed anything less than the highest levels of kindness and compassion, and if we waited but needed to take action before Wednesday, we would have hated to go to strangers. And I would hate for Middle Cat to have left on this final journey without being there to say goodbye. 

It was so helpful, too, that our lovely lovely vet said, "I would rather do it a week too early than one day too late."

So we sent off Middle Cat, sitting in our vets' "comfort room," decorated in warm colors with a cozy couch and a pretty rug. I sat next to her and stroked her soft head the entire time. She lay on a rich red chenille blanket. One of the vets who's treated her in the past came in to say goodbye, and we talked about how I had chosen Middle Cat out of the cage full of kittens at the shelter because she'd been beating up the other cats. The vet who administered the euthanasia keeps the supplies in a pretty little tool box, covered with antique maps and accented by bronzed hardware, something that looks anything but clinical or medical, like something you'd find holding treasured keepsakes in someone's study. 

When it was done I felt sadness, but I also felt relief. Middle Cat is a tough, stubborn little creature - typical (dilute) tortie. She was never one to sit on our laps and cuddle and demand to be petted, but she was always there - by our side, watching, wanting to be part of what we were doing. She would have dragged herself along with us to the bitter end, never leaving us till she had to. I'm sure we could have continued treating her ailments - upped the fluids we were giving her, put her on antibiotics, more pills, more painkillers. But nothing was going to cure her, or even make her feel that much better, and you can't explain to a cat that there's a reason you're poking her with a needle and shoving pills down her throat (which she hated. Eldest Cat, of blessed memory, was such a needy attention hog who loved being held that he was pretty easy to pill. But Middle Cat hated ever being confined in any way, even for the 30 seconds necessary to give her medication). Now she doesn't have to be interfered with anymore.

When we put Youngest Cat to sleep, there was a different kind of sadness. Because he was FeLV positive (feline leukemia), we knew he wasn't likely to live very long (he made it seven years, which was pretty good). But he went downhill very quickly at the end (developing pernicious anemia, which sounds so Victorian), so we had only a few days to prepare ourselves for his loss.

When we put Oldest Cat to sleep, I felt guilty that I wasn't able to keep him alive forever. Obviously no one can do that, but he had been my first pet, and I felt so responsible for him - like there was something I could do to cure him and keep him with me always. (There wasn't, of course - he was eighteen and had hyperthyroidism, and it had affected his neurological system, so his back legs were weak and he couldn't walk in a straight line. He'd navigate a room by following the perimeter, leaning on the walls. We took him in the morning after the night when he cried the whole time because he was hungry but he couldn't eat.) Like I said, he was a needy attention hog who loved his mummy (me) and couldn't bear being separated from me - it used to be that when I took a shower, he'd sit on the covered toilet and cry - we always said he was worried I'd wash down the drain. When they took his body away there was a small incredible part of me that cried out, "Wait, I made a mistake, I want to take it back!"

For whatever reason, I didn't have that kind of sadness this time. Mostly because I had known for a long time that Middle Cat, like Youngest Cat, was going to leave us. (Of course all pets ultimately leave us, but both Middle Cat and Youngest Cat had specific terminal diagnoses that Eldest Cat never did.) Our concern had always been whether we would know when we should let her go. I think the relief was because we finally realized that she would never let us go, and that we had to let her go instead.

And so an era has ended. I got Eldest Cat right before I graduated from college, and Middle Cat a year later; I had them before I met LDH. LDH and I found Youngest Cat nine years later (he was born right around 9/11). When Youngest Cat left us, we were back to my original two; when Eldest Cat left us, I lost my first companion; now that Middle Cat has left us, there is no one left who knew me when I was a terrified grad student, living on my own for the first time, wondering if I would ever succeed at this academic stuff, get a tenure-track job, make something of myself. She saw me through a master's degree, prelims, a dissertation, two tenure-track jobs, the LSAT, applying to and attending law school, the bar exam, a first clerkship, part of a second, and acquiring a permanent post-clerkship job. She saw LDH and me through living together, living apart, breaking up, getting back together, getting married, and various stints of living apart again. He was her devoted Special Friend and she loved him as much as she loved me. 

We are not alone - we have our funny little blind bobtail cat, who loves company, and for whom we will adopt another cat sometime in the near future. But I feel old, to have outlived all my previous cats. And sometimes I'm bewildered at how I've ended up somewhere entirely different from what I imagined when I was that lonely person adopting a little kitten, mottled gray and silver and white and buff, on a hot July 3, in a Twin Cities suburb. It's not a bad place to be, just a little unexpected.

Little Girl, May 1992 - December 2012

I am going to hell

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but despite spending about 90% of my life being entirely unathletic, I am kind of a gym fascist. You see, I am all about FOLLOWING THE RULES (see: Myers-Briggs type ISTJ, and I am the ISTJ-est ISTJ you could ever meet). Which means, for instance, that (in my head) you should come to a class when it starts, stay until it's over, and not chat with your neighbor throughout class. (Hey, I didn't say these rules had to be written down anywhere.) 

More to the point, I am Judgy McJudgerson about form at the gym. If your form is incorrect, I WILL JUDGE YOU. Silently, to myself. But vigorously. In part, I figure if you're not going to bother using the correct form, why bother working out? In part, this is my obsession with following rules. But mostly, I think, this is precisely because I am utterly unathletic, and so one of the only things I have to offer is form. I'm slow and weak and inflexible, but dammit, my form is beautiful. It's the only thing I can beat you on. Well, not you, reading this. But at least some people at my gym.

(Let me state for the record that being able to complete a particular yoga pose does not count. The fact that I can't touch my toes with my knees straight doesn't mean I can't have beautiful form in a sun salutation. Ahem.)

Anyway, last week I went to the gym, and roaming around, found a couple of beat up Concept II rowing machines. I was kind of delighted, because almost everything else I like to do only works my lower body, so I was happy to find something that would give me a full body workout.

I should also note that there is definitely a proper way to use a rowing machine.

There was a guy using the machine next to mine, and man, his form was AWFUL. It sucked. I'm not going to be able to explain this well, but most of the power in rowing actually comes from the lower body; you start with your legs bent and arms extended in front of you, leaning forward. Then you push off with your legs until they're straight, and only then do you engage your upper body to pull the handle of the machine back. You pull the handle by first leaning back, and when you've leaned back as far as you can, you only then do you pull your hands back, keeping them at the level of your waist, until your elbows are bent and the handle is tight against your abdomen. Then you sort of let the handle pull your upper body forward, back to the beginning of the stroke, and only once your arms are fully extended again do you bend your legs and slide back to the front of the slide. (This happens much more quickly and smoothly in real life.)

The guy next to me - he was pulling back with his arms at the same time he was pushing with his legs (don't do that); he wasn't moving all the way back on the slide, but only pushing back a little bit, so his legs never straightened; he didn't lean back at all, so he didn't get as much leverage from his upper body as he could, and the "pull" was very short; also he lifted the handle up at the end of every stroke. Basically, he wasn't getting anywhere near the power into any of his strokes that you should be able to get in rowing.

So I'm rowing away, feeling exceedingly smug, waves of judgment emanating from my sweaty self in this guy's direction. His poor form pains me, in fact. It makes me twitch. It makes me happy that I, I know what proper form is and how to execute it. 

And then the guy stopped. And he took out his crutches, and balancing carefully, worked his way to his feet, and slowly crutched away. 

And I am going to hell.

Never say never

So, anyone who reads here probably also either knows me on Facebook or follows me on Twitter or both, in which case, you know that earlier this week I got a job. (If this is news: hey, I got a job!) It's a permanent gig for after my current clerkship ends (which means that it starts about 9 months from now. Clearly I cannot avoid the academia-like practice of getting jobs months and months before they start), acquired through an elaborate drawn-out process partly described here. (It's Interview #1 job! the one I really really really wanted!) I'm very excited, LDH is excited, all is good.

But the funny thing is that for a long time, I would have said that I would never have taken this job. Partly that's because it's in a part of the country that gets really, really hot, where I said I'd never live. But partly that's because it involves criminal law, and I thought I didn't want to do criminal law. First, it seems like way too many people go to law school because they watched a lot of Law & Order and expect law to be dramatic moments in a courtroom, solving brutal (and yet entertaining) crimes, and I did not want to be that cliche. Second, the stakes in criminal law are REALLY high. I mean, sure, money (at stake in most civil litigation) is pretty important to most people, but in civil litigation no one goes to jail. Third, in case you hadn't noticed, our criminal justice system has a lot of problems. On the one hand, do I really want to help the government exercise its already considerable power to convict people who frequently have been dealt the crappiest of hands and have few legit life options? (see especially the WAR ON DRUGS!!!!) Shouldn't I be one of the people making sure the government can convict only if it can genuinely prove everything beyond a reasonable doubt, keeping the government honest? On the other hand, do I have the stomach to defend someone I know to be guilty? I saw someone write just recently that what they like about being a criminal defense lawyer is that it's very clear - they're not working to serve justice, they're working to serve their client. Can I do that, if I think those things conflict? Obviously that's not always the case. But what about when it is?

(To be clear: I think both prosecutors and defense attorneys perform incredibly important jobs. Without them the adversary system is impossible, etc. etc. They're just not easy jobs, neither of them.)

But you know, the thing is, since graduating and clerking, I've realizing: I find criminal cases way more interesting than civil cases. I mean, yes, the facts are often more dramatic in criminal cases than in civil (although a lot of times they're not: the fact of drug possession is not generally that exciting. The fact of illegal reentry is not generally that exciting. Violence is not, in and of itself, interesting). But it's more that I find criminal procedure really interesting, and the constitutional issues it implicates really interesting. (And civil procedure...not so much.) 

So, long story short, I'm pretty sure I've said at some point that I would never work in criminal law. And that I would never live in this part of the world. Yet, here I go. And I'm thrilled. (And also a little terrified. But as LDH said, that's all the more reason to take the job.)

* * * * *

I was actually lucky enough to get some interviews for positions in other areas of law that also interest me, but are totally different from the job I've taken. So there's just that little nagging part of me that thinks, What if you'd really prefer doing X instead?? The thing is, it's kind of like wanting to be a historian and being equally interested in colonial Quebec and modern South Africa - you can't really do both; ultimately, you have to pick something. But I didn't have offers anywhere else - at least, not yet; and wasn't going hear back before this job needed an answer (which was pretty much right away); and this isn't really an opportunity you pass up. It's really just as well, because it prevented me from agonizing over what would be the best choice. (Presuming I would have even been lucky enough to have to choose.) But setting out a new path often entails a little regret about all the other paths you can't take at the same time.

Exercise, my least favorite thing

When I moved out here, I joined a gym, to have access to spin classes (I haven't used the gym at all for any other purpose). I was in mourning for a while because the spin instructors weren't like my instructors back in my former city, and I still like those classes better, but have made my peace with the new place and found some instructors I like.* So I'm trying to go more regularly, and realized: I think I have to suck it up and start going to the 5:30 am classes. That's pretty painfully early, but I used to go to 6:15 am classes, and it was really great getting the workout over with first thing, and having my evenings free. Plus, going after work is totally fine, but more of a hassle, because I have to prepare a gym bag the night before, take it with me to work, and then change at the gym; and it kills most of my weekday errand-running time. If I leave work right on time, I have about 15 minutes to kill at the gym, which is slightly annoying; but if I run later than 15 minutes at work, I'll either miss class, or have to rush like a mad thing and race in last minute (which I hate). Conversely, if I go first thing in the morning, I can avoid the whole "change at the gym" hassle,** and should have time to get home, change, and shower before heading to work. We'll just have to see which is the greatest danger: that when the alarm goes off at god-awful-o'clock in the morning and it's dark and cold and I'm not really awake, I'll say "eff it" and go back to sleep;*** or that at the end of the day when it's dark and cold and I'm tired from work, I'll say "eff it" and just go home.

Are you a morning exerciser, or an evening, or something else? And if you're a morning exerciser, how do you make yourself actually do it?

*Had a new-to-me instructor Saturday morning, and she was really really good, overall. However, she kept talking about our workout in the context of what Thanksgiving foods it would let us eat - and while I get that it was the weekend before Thanksgiving and it's an appealing approach for a lot of people, I really really hate measuring a workout in terms of calories or food. It seems way too food-issues-triggery, I much prefer to think about it in terms of building strength, power, endurance (or flexibility/balance, depending on activity).

**I know some people don't like changing at the gym because they don't like changing in front of other people. I don't care about that; I'm just lazy, and hate hauling stuff around and making sure I have everything.

***It didn't hurt that at my old gym, you had to sign up in advance to be sure to get a bike, and if you didn't cancel more than 24 hours in advanced, you got charged for the class. So as long as I signed up in advance, it was too late to cancel the morning of; here, I can't sign up for class until 30 minutes before anyway, so no foul if I don't show up.

My week of three interviews

Interview 1

OMGOMGOMG, I really really really REALLY want this job.

Ahem. So.

I can't really tell how it went. There's nothing I can think of that I wish I had answered differently (thankfully, there were no killer hypos involved). So they got a decent representation of me, and if I don't get the job, it's probably because I'm genuinely not a good fit, or other candidates are just better. However, I was a little out of practice interviewing, and I was nervous because I REALLY want this job. Hence, at least in the first (and most important?) part of the interview, I "um"-ed was wordier than I'd like.

I got some very positive reactions from some people (e.g. one guy called my writing "fantastic" - wish I could have recorded that for future reference!). But I've been doing this too long to read anything into that - nothing means anything until you get an offer. (Thank you, Ask A Manager, particularly posts like this - I mean, I knew this, but it's always helpful to see someone spell it out.) I may be a good candidate - but so are lots and lots and lots of other people. 

On the flip side, other interviewers were stone-faced or skeptical in tone - but I can't read much into that, either. The stone-faced ones were stone-faced from the start, but since no one made them interview me, I figure that has to be an approach to interviewing, rather than an assessment. And I think the skeptical/challenging one just wanted to see how I would handle it. (I actualy enjoyed those questions.)

So, I just have to wait and see. But I reeeeeeeeeeaallllly want this job...*

Interview 2

This, for the position I least want, went probably the best. It was one-on-one, but the interviewer was fairly intense, so I was able to maintain a good energy. (I usually interview better before a panel than one-on-one because there's more energy in the room; one of the worst interviews I've done was one-on-one with a woman who'd traveled literally 24 hours to get there, arrived about an hour before the interview, and couldn't ditch because no one else on the committee was able to even get there. The interviewer was perfectly nice but wow, the room was dead.) I was back in interview mode, and at some points it felt more like a conversation than an interview. (The interviewer was clearly listening really carefully and was really good at follow-up questions, which I appreciated. Interviewing is definitely a skill!)

But again, that doesn't guarantee anything. And this is the position I least want - although I think I'd be pretty good at it.**

Interview 3

Really not sure how this one went, in part because I think the position isn't quite as good a fit for me,*** and in part because the interviewers were fairly low-energy and following a canned script. The job goes in a different direction than what I really want to do, and I think that came through. I also got some "how have you handled situation x?" questions that I didn't have a lot of direct experience with (like, a question about handling poor supervisors. Well, I haven't been in a legal job long enough to have to deal with bad supervisors - the jobs end before anything is an issue. And in academia, you don't really HAVE supervisors). So I answered those questions the best I could, but felt like I was spouting cliches a bit.

* * * * *

Anyway. At least they're done, so now I can think about something else (until it's time to worry about hearing back from them, but I have a few weeks on that). It was kind of a whirlwind experience, entailing 12 hours out of 36 on a plane, plus more time on public transport - tiring, but also fun.

You know, though, I worry a little about what my attachment to job applications: they're semi-addicting because they provide an external measure of self-worth. You apply (which is at least a measurable accomplishment - a task completed). Then, if you get an interview, that's another achievement collected. When you interview, everyone is focused on you and nothing but you, and you spend a lot of time talking about yourself (and how amazing you are). Finally, if you get the job, that's another affirmation of your wonderfulness. I worry that collecting job offers is, in some ways, more exciting than actually doing the job I get - and I don't want to tie up my self-worth in getting other people's (employers') approval, rather than in my own assessment of whether I'm growing, learning, and doing a good job. Mind you, clerking - while wonderful - doesn't really give you anywhere to go; you do the same thing over and over again, and the job is by definition short-term. So it's hard not to focus on the next thing rather than what's in front of you. I look forward to having a permanent job, where I can formulate longer-term goals beyond "get another job."**** 

* Really really really amazingly cool work that's hard to break into. The people all seemed really great and I loved the atmosphere. I know this is secondary, but I loved the building and its immediate location in the city. The city itself has pluses and minuses - a good part of the year, the weather sucks rocks. But when the weather doesn't suck rocks, it's amazing.  LDH loves the area. And the cost of living is low - everyone kept pointing out that you could have a decent life there on the salary. Plus, it's a permanent job.

** It's less desirable mostly because in some ways it's very similar to experience I already have (although this is why I think I'd do it well), and because it's temporary, and doesn't lead as directly into a permanent job as the other temporary job. Also, the location is kind of a wildcard.

*** It would be kind of taking a different direction - which could be really really interesting, I might love it - who knows? But I'm a bit hesitant, though it would probably be great experience. It's technically a term position, but it sounds like if they like you, they expect to hire you permanently. The city is amazing in many ways - a great place for legal work, lots and lots and LOTS of things going on. Also closer to my family. But way more expensive and congested, and its own share of crappy weather. And, though this shouldn't matter, the building where I would work was fairly drab. 

**** And I just found out I have a phone interview with another place. Wheee!

Brought to you by a brief hiatus from packing

This is sort of heretical given that one of the prime benefits of academia is supposed to be "having summers off," but I have never been a big fan of summer. It's too hot, the clothes are too skimpy, I hate to sweat, I burn in the sun, and everything is so unstructured. As all academics know, you don't actually get summers "off" - you just get to use that time to try to accomplish all the things you don't have enough time to do during the school year. (Or, you're teaching, which is tough on both prof and students and sort of defeats the point of having summers "off.") Sure, the advent of fall makes clear how much you did/didn't accomplish, which can be depressing - but it's also the beginning of a new semester/school year, which feels fresh and exciting and full of potential, regardless of what did or didn't happen in the previous three months.

For all those reasons, I've always loved fall. It leads you to new things. The weather is GORGEOUS - cool nights, sunny days, blue skies, crisp air. After the summer glare, even the gray days are welcome. And leaves changing color is perhaps my favorite thing in the world. Sure, nothing compares to the fiery reds of New England maples, but golden aspens out west are pretty gorgeous, too. I love boots, I love sweaters, I love jackets, and I love the fun of rediscovering them again after putting them away for the summer. And the return of stews, warm cozy foods, apples and cider and pumpkin flavors, doesn't hurt either.

This year feels different, though. For the first time, this summer felt like the golden bubble of relaxation it's always billed as being - maybe because working 9-5 meant I was never overwhelmed with all this open time and the need to try to fill it productively. Long days and short nights make it feel like you have more free time off work, and everyone slows down just a little.

Now, the signs of fall approaching - shortening days, cooler evenings, brown creeping round the edges of leaves - feel like an ending rather than a beginning. And while usually something has to end for something else to begin, I tend to find endings inherently melacholy, even when positive. (For instance, I was sad after my dissertation defense, because even though I was thrilled to finish grad school, it meant grad school was over!) Leaves changing color look more like decay this year. (Of course, nothing's really changing color yet - it's just been so dry here, stuff is dying.) 

It's not hard to figure out why this summer is different: I'm leaving Current City. On Thursday, we pick up a moving truck. That afternoon, a couple of guys I found through the internet will help us load the truck, and Friday bright and early we'll load the cats in their carriers and drive to Next City, where my next gig begins.

And I'm excited for that gig, I really am. If I imagine being able to wake up in the morning here in Current City, and, instead of taking the bus to current gig, drive over to the federal courthouse, I'm hugely excited. (Also slightly terrified, but eh.) It's just that I really love Current City. I never expected to live here - in fact, since moving out here, NLLDH and I periodically turn to each other and say, "How did we end up HERE?" - and I don't have any connections here or, really, reason to come back. It's kind of like a little fairy oasis that appeared in our lives at the right time, which will retreat again as we move on to other things. I could be wrong, of course - and I'd be very happy to come back here and settle here. But I don't have any reason I have to be here, and will be applying for jobs elswhere. NLLDH is also job searching, and he's looking at openings around the country. 

(When I say I have no reason to come back - I do know very cool people from law school that I hope to stay in touch with. But I don't feel like I've put down roots here strong enough to pull me back in the future.)

Chances are Next City will not be the place I will settle to spend the rest of my life. And honestly, between the two of us, I don't know if we will ever settle in one place - what we want to do with our careers seems to keep getting in the way. No matter how I try, I can't quite seem to prioritize settling down over trying for certain career paths (and even if I did, NLLDH doesn't). 

But I hope - I really hope - that maybe the next place, that will be where we stay. That I can keep this new sense of summer relaxation, but that fall can be favorite season again.

Oxymoron

It's weird because when I read about legal academics (that is, people working in legal academia), I find myself simultaneously envious, and uninterested.

I'm envious in that they're doing, on one level, what I wanted to do for so long, and what I'd probably still be doing if a few things in my life had gone differently (and the academic job market wasn't so terrible) - and, honestly, what part of me thinks I should still want to do. It's hard to get out of the habit of measuring according to the academy's yardsticks.

But I also have no interest in doing what they're doing.

I think I will always have some fascination with academia as a profession; I have an awful lot of friends who are still academics, and I spent too much time in higher education (as student and prof) to walk away from it entirely. I also think that on some level I keep hoping I can reconcile my past and present, that I can make some kind of concrete use of all those academic years, that I can draw on the well of knowledge I spent so many years accumulating to water my current professional path (I know, these metaphors are labored). Basically, I want those years to COUNT. And the easiest way for them to count would be to figure out some way back into an academic life - particularly working in legal academia (I see no way, nor do I want, to work my way back to being a practicing medievalist. Whatever lingering regrets I deal with, that ship has sailed).

But you know what? I have almost no academic interest in law what. so. ever.

Yes, when I was a medievalist, I made heavy use of legal sources in my research. But that's different - I wasn't interested in the law, I was interested in the culture and society of the day, and legal sources were a convenient means of accessing that culture and society. I may have said this before, but my driving question as a historian, always, was: What would it have been like to live back then? And since class and gender are two of the biggest things shaping what it's like for me to live right now, those were things I wanted to know about in the past. So the law, to the extent I learned about it, was purely a tool. (In fact, my understanding of medieval law as an overarching subject was fairly pathetic and late-acquired - you can figure out a lot of ways to use legal records without actually knowing very much about the law).

In contrast, when it comes to studying law, my driving question has been different (to the extent I even have one). It's closer to: What effect does this have on people right now? What does this mean for Party X? And now that I'm out of school - not really in practice, but at least learning more about how the law works in certain corners of the real world - I find that I very much enjoy figuring out how the law applies to a particular given set of facts. Plop appellate briefs in front of me, I am happy to learn about the most obscure things you could imagine to figure out which party ends up in where.

For instance (and this isn't at all obscure, it's just the easiest example that comes to mind), I have had to learn quite a bit about prosecutorial misconduct (short explanation: many many many criminal defendants argue on appeal that the prosecutor made all kinds of dreadfully! improper! and prejudicial! arguments in their closing statement, which require reversal. And sometimes prosecutors actually do this. Pro tip: if you are prosecuting a case in the week or so after 9/11, you should not draw analogies between the defendant and Saddam Hussein. Also, in my state, at least, you can't spend the closing argument talking about how the defendant (or their counsel/witnesses) "lied." You can probably say they weren't truthful, you can point out that every other witnesses' testimony contradicted what the defendant said, but you can't call them a liar). And I find it quite interesting to figure out whether a particular kind of prosecutorial statement in a given case counts as misconduct sufficient for reversal. (For the record: it almost never does. But you know, it could happen). 

But I don't have any particular desire to research prosecutorial misconduct.

I can still generate research questions when necessary. In theory, me-the-historian thinks it could be quite interesting to look at changing rules re: prosecutorial misconduct over the decades (can you say things now you used not to be able to say, or vice versa? why? this could be especially fascinating around race/gender). Or it might be kind of interesting to compare state law about this and see what regional differences exist (if any). (I have no idea if there are any regional differences or if they would in fact be of any interest at all. I'm just talking out my ass here.) Speaking more legally, I can imagine a law review article analyzing a particular kind of doctrine about prosecutorial misconduct and arguing why that legal doctrine is completely wrong (omg, prosecutors should totally be able to compare their defendants to Saddam Hussein!0!0!011!! free speech prosecutorial discretion yada yada!* or, omg, prosecutors get to say absolutely all kinds of terrible things about defendants and it's completely unfair!!! here's what they should do instead!!!).

But I don't especially want to do any of these things. (Which is good, because I'm not going to build a legal academic career talking about prosecutorial misconduct. It's just the bad example I came up with off the top of my head.) And, honestly, I am not interested in academic study of almost any legal stuff.

There are, maybe, two exceptions. And if it were my job to come up with academic interests about the law, I'd probably find them. But I'm not interested enough to come home at the end of a day filled with research and writing about the law and spend any time on these subjects, rather than exercising, or knitting, or vegging out in front of the TV.

[This is sort of a long drawn-out post justifying things I don't need to justify. No one is telling me, You know, you really should write legal scholarship! (Seriously - no one.) I suppose it's motivated by the kind of academic hangover alluded to above, where you feel guilty that you don't care about all the things you used to have a professional interest in caring desperately about.] 

*Those are terrible arguments for being able to compare your defendant to Saddam Hussein. Just so you know.

 

The tyranny of choice

Sometime not that long ago (which at this point could be any time in the last ten years) there was discussion in the media about the tyranny of choice: the idea that the more options you have, the harder it is actually to make a choice. There's nothing especially counterintuitive about that idea - on the one hand, I suppose you might assume the more options are out there, the easier it is to find exactly what you're looking for. On the other hand, though, the more options are out there, the harder it is to decide what you want in the first place. 

Shopping at your standard outlet mall these days brings this concept to life.

There's an outlet mall about half an hour south of my city (and an aside: does anyone else remember when outlets were actual outlets? that is, they sold off the seconds/slightly-less-than-perfect models from the current season, and leftovers from previous seasons? rather than being "factory stores" filled with clothing lines made specifically for the outlets, that never bore any relation to the retailer with which the factory store's ostensibly affiliated?). I spent about five hours there yesterday, and didn't even make it through the whole thing before retreating, defeated. (And I actually like shopping!) There's just so. much. stuff.

Anyway, I've lost a bit of weight and it's amazing how much easier it is to find clothes that fit. Unfortunately I ran into that dilemma where the stuff I really liked, I didn't know how much I'd wear, and the stuff I knew I'd wear was - well, just fine. I ended up with a peasant-y top that I really like, and a pair of tailored dark denim crops that I also really like except they're a bit big in the hips (they may shrink, although doubtless not in the hips). I also got three knit tanks (two with lace trim), which will be useful to have but aren't that exciting, and a white cardigan which is a little bit shapeless, but seemed a useful thing for the summer. I'm least sure about a pair of glen-plaid-ish black/white pants (they fit fine but I worry the cut is a bit dumpy), and two short-sleeved cardigans (citron and light gray) (maybe a bit boxy and quite lightweight).

The thing is, I find it impossible to resist cheap clothes that fit. IMPOSSIBLE. (No individual piece I bought was over $24 and most were well under.) Maybe it's because I've spent a lot of time hovering on the edge of standard sizes, having a hard time finding things that fit; maybe it's because going back to school made me feel like a poor student (again).

The thing is, I'd so much rather be that person who buys one or two carefully-chosen, high quality items that I really love, rather than a bunch of crap that's just fine and serves the purpose. When I was in high school I was sort of obsessive about rotating clothes/outfits, because GOD FORBID I wear the same item more than once in a week (or ideally two). The result was that I wore a bunch of stuff I didn't like that much because it spaced out my "good" stuff (so I wasn't that girl wearing the pink dress every week) (here I'm thinking specifically of my hot pink sweater dress from Benetton. Yes, I had one. And I had hot pink shoes that matched. The 80s were a beautiful time).

I've pretty much given that up, and embraced wearing my "good" stuff more often - I would, genuinely, rather re-wear the same few pieces really regularly and really like them and feel good in them, than wear crap for the sake of greater variety.

And yet: I set foot into an outlet mall and I go mad, picking up this piece and this piece and this piece and this piece until I'm carrying great mountains of clothes into the dressing room. And then, if you're buying one $20 cardigan, why not get a second in another color? If you like it well enough to buy it in the first place? Even if it's not the world's most exciting cardigan? 

I was going to say, I suppose the answer is, don't shop in outlet malls (but the cheap! the cheap!). But even outside the outlets, the tyranny of choice can get overwhelming (I had a whole slew of tabs open with different retailers' websites earlier this evening). So maybe the answer is to learn to sew. (Seriously, I wish I lived somewhere you can walk into a shop and have someone make your clothes for scratch.)

 

Post-academic life: To write, or not to write

So, I am part of some conversations elsewhere online about transitioning from academic to non-academic jobs. (I feel like I cheated, in that I went back to school rather than trying to convince employers directly that the valuable skills I learned during my Ph.D. make me suited to do something other than teach, publish, or go back to school. But it is what it is, and I take part in these conversations nonetheless.) And recently these conversations have reminded me that although the transition out of the ivory tower is hard, once you're actually out, it's kind of amazing how quickly you can forget your former life.

(Disclaimer: This is just my own experience, not offered as anything universal. My own transition wasn't that bad - just expensive - but there are some good reasons for that. Leaving my last tenure-track job was fairly miserable, as not getting your contract renewed after third-year review sucks, frankly. But although leaving that job was both necessary to and a catalyst for leaving academia, I didn't actually change careers until later. Also, since I went back to school, my first introduction to this new career took place under very familiar academic structures and culture. It wasn't like I got dropped into a law firm and had to learn both the substance and the culture of the law at the same time. Finally, I had had my shot at academia - I worked as a full-time professor for nine years, and while I enjoyed it and left more because I couldn't find another academic job than because I flat out decided academia didn't work for me, I could walk away thinking, "Well, been there, done that." Not entirely - I never got tenure - but I knew what I was walking away from from long experience. I think the toughest transition is for people who wanted academic jobs but never got one. Not that deciding academia doesn't work for you and you need to find something else isn't hard, but in a different way. In any case. I digress. The point I was trying to make is that I can't really speak to the experience of all former academics (or aspiring academics), since I recognize my own experience wasn't really that terrible and not necessarily representative of anyone else's.)

So, as I was saying: it's amazing how quickly academia recedes into the background. I mean, in some ways, not - the fact that I'm so much older than most (though not all) entry level lawyers makes it hard to forget that I'm different, that I've done all these other things before going to law school. But then, there are tons of people in law school who did other stuff previously. They, too, have developed all kinds of skills and abilities that stood them in good stead in school and now in their careers; so in that respect, we're not all that different. I just took more time than a lot of them. 

But when I was applying to law schools I talked once with a former medievalist who became a lawyer, and she said you really quickly forget about academia, and she was totally, completely right. 

(For me, this is generally an excellent thing. I have always been good at making a clean break and walking away from things that didn't work; I'm congenitally averse to regrets. Academia was cool; I had that experience; now I'm doing other stuff. And as I've said before, I don't miss academia. I miss the familiarity, and knowing what the hell I was doing, and not being the low-person-on-the-totem-pole, but I don't miss the actual work.)

And I have changed. It's a cliche that law school makes you think like a lawyer, but it does. NLLDH laughs at me when I see liability everywhere (for instance, we visited his family and bought our niece a donut with a paper sports team logo on it; he and she were wondering if it was edible, and I said, "It has to be edible, because if it wasn't, they'd have to warn buyers it's not edible, or else they'd be liable for any injuries from eating it." This, to me, has become a perfectly normal reaction, but NLLDH thought it was hysterical). I can't read academic work in the humanities anymore - I want it to work the way legal scholarship works, and I get impatient with the long sentences and long chapters and lack of headings. (When I started law school, I disdained headings as the refuge of the lazy - I believed you should be able to signal transitions in the text without needing headings. I have now come to believe headings are so very helpful!) I have a different perspective on higher ed. I don't agree with my academic friends' perspectives as much as I used to (I respect them, but don't always agree with them). Partly, I've gained a new field of expertise that informs the way I look at things, and partly, going back to school reminded me what it's like to be a student, and broke my automatic sympathy with the faculty perspective. (And partly, I just don't care about all of it anymore.)

Perhaps the last part of the academic identity that I let go of was the idea of myself as a writer. Now, I have always considered myself a writer, since I started writing what was really probably fanfiction around 4th grade or so (if you can write fanfiction about Nancy Drew and the like). The cool thing about being an academic was that it meant I legitimately wrote for a living. Sure, a lot of that writing was syllabi and student assignments, but still, there was actual published writing in there. 

During law school, I carved out an identity as "good writer." I won a prize for being the top student in my legal writing section. I "wrote on" to law review. During 2L and 3L, I wrote a seminar paper or the equivalent in every semester (in my law school, seminars were small, writing-focused classes, and you had to take one before you graduated; I took two official seminars and two de facto seminars. To give you some perspective, something like 90 students in my class of ~165 took their seminar in their final semester). In one of those classes I received the top grade awarded. (Yes, law school tells you these things, and you care. It's kind of sick.) Of course, that means I didn't get the top grade in three of them, so I'm not claiming I was brilliant, but still. Profs told me my exams were well-written and I got one of my top grades (and probably near-top grade in that class) in an exam where the prof explicitly told us she was going to grade on quality of writing. (And I got one of my lowest grades on an exam for a prof who, I later figured out, did not care at all about quality of writing and valued only high volume of correct info.)

And throughout law school, I always kind of assumed that I would continue to write scholarly stuff. Eventually, once I'd learned enough law to have something to say about it. I knew I wouldn't continue to write medieval history. I loved it when I did it (very occasionally I suffer a pang that I won't work on the next project I'd identified for myself, which was going to be a study of social climbers. I mean, seriously, wouldn't that have been cool?), but I have always said that I wouldn't be an independent scholar, and that if I wasn't a history professor, I wouldn't keep writing history. (Not knocking independent scholars - just what works for me.) But I thought I would continue to write scholarly stuff, and I sort of kept a mental notebook of stuff I'd be interested in writing about.

And you know what? That notebook is largely blank, and sitting, undisturbed and dusty, abandoned on some mental back cupboard.

I find myself almost entirely uninterested in writing any more. There are a lot of reasons for this - right now, at work, I do nothing but research and write, and when I get home at the end of the day I'm just. not. interested; I've actually reclaimed my non-work life and developed hobbies that I love, and I want to spend my spare time on them; and I find myself kind of conflicted about legal scholarship and the purpose it serves. (I could say more about this but won't right now or this post will never end.) The only thing I'm really interested in writing about (at least for now) is unionization of contingent faculty - and I'm not interested enough to spend any of my spare time on it when it's not my job to do so. 

Initially, it was hard to give up the idea of being a writer. But I feel less and less conflicted about it as time goes by. I watch NLLDH carve out time to do research and write papers, and be tired all the time. I offer to edit drafts for him, and find myself completely irritated by giving my time to such work (even though I offered. Never claimed consistency). 

I may well find myself in a place in the future where writing becomes appealing again. I don't know what kind of writing that would be, but it's possible. Right now, it's more of a relief than a disappointment to let the label "writer" go, slipping into the ether with the rest of my academic identity.