the deepening of the season

At some point, summer turned serious. Camp Law Firm will soon be coming to an end, and the next phase is imminent. Lunches have stopped being about networking and meeting people; now they're about spending time with your potential coworkers, sizing each other up, picturing life as long-term colleagues. We've all realized that, while the firm likely intends to make good on its promise to extend offers to all summer associates, we're competing over a finite number of seats in our preferred practice groups. If Group X is only hiring three people, but seven would like to join the group, four of those folks are going to wind up somewhere else--a risky proposition, given the rumors circulating across practice groups.

I hate competition like this. I hate zero-sum games. I hate having to displace someone else to achieve my desired outcome. While this state of affairs doesn't chafe nearly so much as my 1L school's nasty habit of calculating GPA and class rank, it's still no fun to ponder. My fellow summers are cool people. Most of us targeting the World's Most Oversubscribed Practice Group are good friends. I'd be happy working together with any of these folks, and find no joy in a situation where it's either me or them and can't be us.

So I'm doing my best not to think about it now. If I can stay active in both of my potential practice groups of choice, if I can book enough completed projects in the summer associate database and enough face time with people whom I'd like to remember my name, then I don't see a need to game the system any further. If the clerkship thing works out (which is its own issue these days...*sigh*), I won't even be back to the firm until 2006, by which point the World's Most Oversubscribed Practice Group might possibly be a little less so.

Or not.

There are grim days when summer turns serious, days when the future is chilly and overcast and life seems full of chips and stains and door dings. The apartment needs a good vacuuming, too many of my clothes still languish at the dry cleaners, our bills must be buried somewhere on the kitchen table, and the to-do list is rife with trivial items stacked right alongside Make Up Mind About Practice Groups and Get Those Clerkship Apps Done Dammit. This stuff could pile up until it blocks out the natural light altogether, if I let it.

There's a lot to be said for marriage, cuddly pets, and vanilla vodka.

thus spake /jca @ July 27, 2004 08:32 PM | TrackBack