Finally!!!!

Got a job! Working as a buyer for a trading company. Great earning potential! Never thought the day would come. It’s been a long road, applying to over 1000 jobs. Literally. 1000 jobs. I was lucky enough to get several interviews ranging from salesperson to personal assistant. None of them came through until this one. I was starting to get antsy I consider myself lucky, escaping from the money trap that is law school. I’m going to make roughly 30K with incentives for whatever big accounts I am able to open.

That’s why I haven’t been able to write any entries here. Getting this job was like a sign from heaven. It happened too quick and before I knew what was happening i was already employed and getting trained. I have a 1million dollar purchasing target! Isn’t that crazy. I see myself learning a lot from this place. And even if this isn’t the job I end up retiring from, It’s still a place I can learn from! At this point in my life I consider myself extremely satisfied. I look at all the people in my life, from my friends to my boyfriend to my parents, and at the end of they all support me and all the choices I make. It’s been hard you know, trying to find a job and making such a huge decision to leave law school and find another path.

Unfortunately I still haven’t told my parents. Although I know that they’ll be supportive. (eventually!) It might have been smarter though to let my parents know before they told everyone and their mother that I only had two more years before I graduated. I did feel a little guilty because I’m basically LYING to everyone. Who wouldn’t. I’m beginning to feel as though this could be the beginning of a very deep hole that I’m digging from myself. I need more time though, today was my sister’s graduation from med school party and I kinda didn’t want to ruin it. It was her day, after all. Still, it was still painful for me to smile and tell everyone that I was going to finish what I started with law school, knowing full well that that wasn’t going to finish. And I did feel bad, watching my sister gain all the limelight, although she fully deserved it. Dropping out of law school, in the eyes of many, is not much of an accomplishment. I will never have that law school party that everyone is already excited about for me. I will never have everyone celebrate my accomplishments, except at maybe my wedding. I guess I exchanged more than just my education. I told one of my co-workers about my choice not to continue law school. She gave me really good advice, she said, never look back at your choices only forward. I think that’s the smartest thing I ever heard.

Partied hard here for my sis!

Disappointing Others But Not Yourself

I went home this weekend. I haven’t seen my parents since last week and had hardly seen them over the semester so I thought I would pay them another visit. I also saw my sister, who is graduating from medical school. She was lucky enough to be able to go do some globetrotting. She went first to the Dominican Republic, to do some medicinal studies, and then Greece, to do some R&R. Lucky, I honestly don’t see myself being that fortunate in law school. Right now, I am supposed to be participating in the writing competition and working full time at an internship I’m not getting paid for. All for the sake of education right? I consider my sister very fortunate, having chosen medicine, she’s placed in a well respected hospital in the city and will be paid roughly 55K for her residency with subsidized housing. She’s more better off than law students because the placement programs at medical schools and she starts off with 55K AND subsidized housing. In the worst of the economy I saw fresh attorneys getting paid 35K. Sounds like financial suicide to me…

Anyway I digress, I went home this weekend to partly feel out the environment because this house is about to turn into WW3. It has always been my parent’s dream that become a high level professional like an attorney. Especially my mother. She’s been prancing around telling everyone and anyone that she’s about to have a daughter that’s an attorney. Imagine her humiliation having to tell people that instead of an attorney I will be a law school dropout. My parents double teamed me today. Saying this and that about how I should look down the long road ahead of me and realize that the rewards are not immediate but down the long road ahead. There’s no arguing with my parents. They believe their right and still know what is best for me. And I completely understand their worries and their issues with me leaving law school but at the end of the day I know that they both have their own agendas. My mother loves to gloat and my sisters and I are just another tool she uses to show that she has accomplished something. My father loves structure and the thought of me wandering through life in search of meaning and happiness seems to him like a load of hogwash when I have a “surefire” ticket to stability.

The honest fact about me is that I was never made to be an attorney. I don’t like rules and restrictions. I like being creative. I don’t like spending hours upon hours scouring books looking for the nook in the cranny of knowledge. I didn’t like being a law student and I sure as hell won’t like being a lawyer.

As disappointed as my parents will be that their middle child protegee will not be an attorney, I realize that disappointment only matters when your disappointing yourself. I’ve been able to do a lot of things I wouldn’t have been able to do as a law student since I’ve quit. I’ve gone on job interviews. I’ve seen my family and friends. I’ve sat around like a couch potato and indulged in watching TV series like an addict. I’ve gone drinking and been, at times, belligerently drunk. This might not seem like much to enjoy but it’s one less thing I would have had as a law student. This is life. Not a degree, not your wealth. But rather, the days you have to spend doing things that matter or don’t matter to you.

Was here last night! lots of fun 🙂

Ending the Cycle

The job hunt has been particularly hard but I find it to be a self-growing experience. First of all, it is going terribly. Not to go into specifics, but there have been some awkward moments. The job hunt is getting really desperate. I’m pretty much going for the lower end of the job market. Sales, waitressing, customer service. I’ve done mindless jobs before and I think I’m about to get involved all over again with these types of jobs.

I had a really bad interview last week that went as bad as an interview can go. See, I got this crazy idea that if I fudged the information in my resume, like, you know, going to law school, some of the dates on my employment history, I would have a better chance at getting an interview. After all, who really checks those things anyway? Wrong! I was interviewed by these two partners from a law firms. I’m talking big law firms. They had dreams of starting their own. In the words of one of the interviewers, “I want the name of X and X to be on top with the law firms we worked at.” Yippee. One of them was actually pretty chill and I think he was just tired to being slave driven at his big law firm and would rather set his own schedule. The other was an absolute elitist and kind of an asshole. Well, they caught me in the whole law school lie. I should have known better. My f’ing twitter. I never liked using it anyway. They also caught me fudging my employment dates. Yes, this was embarrassing. Because not only was I a complete liar, I was also underqualified. They wanted someone to basically run the business for them while they did their lawyer thing and raked in the money. hmmm. Sounds tempting but I did not just leave a law school environment, full of type A personalities, for a law firm consisting of complete type A asshole. Also they wanted to check my employment history and I wasn’t going to get the job anyway.

Okay, lesson learned. Be honest with your resume. Yes, everyone fudges but be as honest as you can. Right now I’m applying for everything and all. I need to pay back my loans ASAP.

On the plus side, I got to party hard with my law school people. It was a lot of fun. Went out to the bar we couldn’t even get into. Ended up at this place called FatBaby. Haha. You know that ur only going to have X amount of fun at a place called FatBaby. It was somewhat fun. I ended up getting left behind though while I was drunk and getting hit on by this guy. Don’t worry. I wasn’t that drunk. I ended up going home by MYSELF and took a cab.

And thus begins my life. Guys and Bars and looking for jobs. 😛

Biglaw May Just Be A Pipe Dream But Happiness Isn’t

One more final to go and I am really happy with the choice I made to finish it out. Mostly motivated by the desire to save face, I find the pressure to perform on these tests almost laughable when you are on your way out. I took some time on my last exam to watch intently those who were counting their whole lives on these tests. One girl looked up to the ceiling like she was praying; wishing, hoping that for just a moment brilliance would strike her and she would write a masterpiece for our professor. Others were frantically flipping through pages, putting in an absurd amount of pensive thought. I was just hoping to get through enough so that I didn’t fail out. If I wanted to fail out I would have not gone and trust me I thought about it.

I feel really good about the future though. I’ve been applying to whole slew of positions. The favorite administrative assistant, secretary, and receptionist positions that recent grads or dropouts like me end up applying for. It took a while for me to get over my bruised ego of having to accept the fact that I will never be that brilliant lawyer that almost all of us envisioned ourselves to be at the end of our law school careers. But I have a new image of myself. In this vision I’m a person that has time to go to the movies on Friday nights or shopping once a week. I’m a person that can finish a book for my own reading enjoyment. I go on dates. Go to concerts like how I used to. And maybe I get to go on a vacation with my friends instead of saving costs by buying Ramen rather than just buying real food. That’s right I am not a savior of justice. I’m just saving myself.

I saw my sister the other day, she just came back from being in DR for six weeks. She was doing some clinicals there, she’s finishing medical school this year. We were talking on the couch in my house, the one I grew up in, and it seemed to me that if she could do it all over again she probably wouldn’t do medical school. She had to watch all her friends go on multiple vacations a year as nurses. I’m sure she really enjoyed the stress and challenge of med school. I enjoyed the challenge of law school. But that gets old. At least for my sister she gets placement. Law school is basically fend for yourself in an elitist environment. She got placed at a hospital in the City and she’ll get subsidized housing. That’s better than most new law school grads get it anymore. When we were talking I looked at her, she was tired but she was still happy. Looking at myself, I don’t know if I would be that lucky if I continued law school.

On a brighter note, I decided to get Netflix and indulge myself in some leisure 🙂

Living in Limbo

Let me just start by saying that law school fucked up my life. It put me in serious debt. My grades aren’t good enough for me to get a good job afterwards. And that was one year wasted in terms of getting job experience. I’ve been scouring the internet for other people in my situation wondering what they did and how they felt about their situation. The more I read, the more I realize that this is probably the best solution. Most of the comments came from third tier school students wishing they never went. I’m presently in a second tier school but at the very bottom, so I guess that makes me in the same boat as those third tier students. Looking at their comments, I felt really sorry for them. Some had graduated and were forced to take non-legal low paying jobs others were almost finished and were ready to quit because the reality of their job prospects began to sink in. Those were smart people who probably would have succeeded if they found positions that suited their strengths. Law school sure is a gamble.

The job hunt isn’t going well. It is going pretty poorly, actually. I’m on my second week of sending out applications, I’ve sent out about 100 applications/resumes and cover letters. The result? One interview and one prospective interview. One ended up going really badly, since I didn’t get the company information until the last moment and thus did not know anything about the company. It was a PR internship. I was willing to work for free in exchange for experience. I walked in and I knew I didn’t fit in. I got the company information too late and didn’t get to research effectively because I would have been late other wise. I was dressed in a suit, and it was a laid back atmosphere. I was sweaty from rushing and being in that dumb suit because I was afraid of being late anyway. I WAS late anyway. It was just a catastrophe. I pretty much knew that it wasn’t gonna happen for me. But what can you do, it was an internship job anyway. Better to be getting paid then working for free, right? And the other one didn’t even have the opportunity to go badly since the person on the other end didn’t check her messages and thus the opportunity to be interviewed was lost. Great receptionist, huh?

So what now? Sometimes I wonder if I should just start my own business. I hate working for other people in general. And I actually do better when I know something is mine. I wonder, how do people do it? How do they just start a business and build on it? One of my favorite YouTube stars is Michelle Phan, the makeup guru that went video viral. She started in 2009 and quickly became viral for her makeup tutorial videos on YouTube. She now is a Lancome spokesperson and works backstage for several designers during fashion week. How did she get to be so lucky? I”m sure it takes a lot of uncertainty, power, and drive to get where she is now. Who really knows anymore? But in all honesty, it’s people like that that make me inspired. Taking nothing but your own macbook, and making it into your career. Amazing!

As of right now, I’m still on the job hunt. Hopefully something comes around….

Michelle Phan- YouTube Makeup Guru

Going To Finals I Don’t Even Care About

This week is finals week and I just want to kill myself. It’s horrible. Since I’ve decided that I’m going to drop out anyway, it’s been hard for me to even pick up a pen and study. I find myself more drawn to applying for jobs and writing on my blog than reviewing last year’s hypotheticals. Can you blame me? It’s hard to feel motivated to study when you know that whatever grade you get has no bearing on your life anymore.

It’s funny though, to watch everyone flood the professor’s office and try to squeeze whatever knowledge they can out of him. And they all have the full intention of hoarding that knowledge, of course. This time around I don’t think it’s as nerve racking as it was the first semester. It was pretty crazy. I think all the upperclassmen knew which one of us were 1L’s. This year it’s calmer, but you can still sense the urgency. Over the course of the semester I was able to pick out who was at the top of the class and who had fallen short of their scholarship requirements. We all knew that we all couldn’t keep our scholarships but we all hoped and BELIEVED that we wouldn’t be the ones to lose it.

I’ve been studying half assed lately and now I’m sure I’m not going to do well. Not that it even matters because I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to look at my grades. The other day my professor gave us a speech about how starting out as a lawyer can be difficult. No shit. He told us that we should be looking at the big picture and how he climbed up the ranks after law school, after working at a small law firm. I have to admit, for a second I felt moved. For a second I felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life by not studying harder. I looked around at my fellow classmates and saw successful future lawyers and a sense of comfort fell upon me.

But then I looked at my professor’s profile online. Top school and law review editor. I’m sure you struggled lots. He’s a great man, to be sure. He cares about the success of his students and I’m being genuine when I say that. But not all of us can succeed to the same extent as others; I’m pretty sure that he knows that too.

I guess I’m writing this post so that you can all wish me luck on these finals which I can care less about. I’d like to keep a facade that this really matters.

This is pathetic and miserable. Why are people allowed to put themselves in this kind of position?

All I can say is desperation is sad thing. People should have some sort of self respect. What do I mean? Well take a look at this craigslist ad i came across and you’ll understand what financial desperation looks like.

Title: Attorney Available for Hire: Temp, Perm, Legal, Non-legal

I am a New York City-located attorney admitted to the bar in New York State and available now for hire. I was a scholarship recipient who graduated in the top third of my class from a top New York area law school and I am seeking employment to begin right away.


Although I am seeking a full time position at a law firm, I will consider jobs which are temporary in nature, contract positions, or even per diem in the meantime while I continue my search. Positions which are non-legal in nature but which are temporary or well-compensated will also be considered.

I already have experience in court, having worked per diem for a firm already, and over a year of experience working at a non-attorney real estate company. I have appeared on behalf of clients at dozens of motions and foreclosure settlement conferences, as well as drafted multiple orders to show cause, summonses, and answers.

I am an extremely strong written and oral advocate, having received A’s in all of my advocacy courses. I received numerous awards in policy debate while in undergrad, where I earned a B.S. in Finance. I have experiences interning at the District Attorney’s office, in New York City government, and as a judicial intern for a Federal Judge.

Once again, I am already admitted to the New York bar and I am ready to begin employment immediately. Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to speaking with you.
*******************************************************

Is this what we are reduced to? Selling ourselves on craigslist desperate for a dime? And after everything, after law school and all the headaches associated with such a institution of “higher learning,” this is what is left for some of us? Its experiences like this that make me sure that quitting is the only option. What else is left.

[Applause] Ladies and Gentlemen, this, I’m afraid, is the face of desperation.

Why Can’t I Spell Dropout?

Sorry my brain is fried. I didn’t realize that I misspelled it until it was too late. It doesn’t help that legal concepts are clouding my mind so that I now find it hard to do even the simplest tasks. I decided to keep it as my domain mainly because it’s quaint. It also shows how muddled my mind is from all this shit.

I have an analogy for you. Law School is like getting married. It’s expensive, it’s a life commitment, and it’s exciting but sure to get dull over time. Like that one, huh? I think it’s true. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people like me, that signed up for hell because they weren’t sure what they would do but thought they could figure it out later. After all, there are plenty of things to do in law. Lawyers are always needed. Actually, that’s a completely flawed way of thinking. Doctor’s are always needed, not so much lawyers. I would have been better off figuring out my life as an administrative assistant rather than spend 30K in order to learn that law is not for me. The reason I stayed so long is that I also liked the prestige of saying I was a law student. It was basically like saying, “Haha stupid, you couldn’t make it this far.”

I know there are people that want to be here. Every night they feel like there is this duty to read the cases, that there is a true meaning in the law that calls them to think up hypotheticals to ask the professor. Kudos to them, those are the people that deserve to be in law school with full scholarship. But that’s not me. Unfortunately, for my parents. I kinda want to be young. I’m 22, never had a real job, and am wasting my youth on a subject that really doesn’t fancy my interests. Maybe quitting will be the best thing I ever did, maybe the worst, I guess I’ll find out and you’ll know as I blog along about it. 🙂

I’m actually really excited to leave law school behind. But I am also melancholy. I was studying with my study group yesterday for eight hours and I really love every single one of them. They’re very special to me. And it will suck to leave them but I have this strange feeling that we won’t be the same study group next year. It’s hard enough to schedule our time together as 1L’s, I can hardly imagine it working out next semester when we’re all supposed to have joined a journal, the moot court or a clinic. And I really can’t commit my life to a profession just because I love my study group. That’s not practical either.

On the other hand, the job search is going horrendously. I don’t have any useful experience in much of anything. So I’m basically just applying for entry level management positions or administrative positions. I mean, I’ve only applied for one week, but I’m so impatient. Definitely one of my worst qualities. I don’t expect to hear form anyone for at least two weeks.

Well wish me luck. Because who knows where I’ll end up.

I have yet to leave law school.  Several attempts and I have yet to make it;  but with nearly 200k worth of student loans ahead of me, I think this time it’s real.  If I leave now it would only be 50K, which would suck as a loss but would not be undoable.

Before I started, I contemplated just taking the loan money and running.  I had just moved into a new apartment in Queens; the loan money would have held me over for at least six months until I found a job.  I could have just never showed up.  I could have gotten my money back.  Nah, I actually somewhat enjoyed my first  semester.  And I did meet some really amazingly smart individuals, too bad their putting all that intellect to law school.

I remember when I first started law school.  It was a whirlwind of excitement.  Here I was, part of this elite class of people.  We were told that this would be the most exciting intellectual experience we would ever encounter.  That the sky was the limit.   I got to walk around like I was the shit or rather the B-O-S-S.  Shamefully, I had a sort of cavalier attitude that said, “That’s right bitch, I’m a law student and I’m the shit.”   It didn’t last too long.

By the end of 1st semester, I was done.  I hated law.  Especially Legal Research and Writing.  Horrible class.  And that was the one class that was somewhat useful.   I actually learned how to write as a lawyer, too bad legal writing is completely devoid of any creativity.  It was the most mathematical writing I ever encountered. uggghhhhh!  That’s one thing I will not miss about quiting.

And then I got my grades. (Don Don Don)  Yep bottom 10%.  lucky me.  I really could not figure out what went wrong.  I should have quit then.  But they know how hard it is for type A personalities to admit defeat.  That’s why they make you face the Dean of Students and tell them you want to quit.  They’ll shake their heads at you and say, “Are you sure?”  AKA:  You can’t come back.  I sat in the Registrars office and guess what they had as a sign:  “Quitting is Forever.”  Those sons of bitches really know how to guilt you.  I made all my friends at this point anyway

 I got sucked back in.  This time however, I am not paying my bill.  Let them try to suck me back with no dinero.

Hahahahahah

I WILL NOT COME BACK THIS TIME!!!!!!