Paying Rent & Full Windsors Oh My!

I spent almost an hour tonight going over how to tie the most pro looking knot of them all: the Windsor. It's the one that screams, "you best recognize ma' steez or I will seriously go apeshit on your brain."

And the reason I chose tonight to finally figure out how to do a windsor knot is because I again have a reason to be wearing ties: my office has decided to keep me on for at least another 6 months.

They don't have room/need for another full-time attorney right now, so they are keeping me on as a half-lawyer, half-jack-of-all-trades assistant.

The Pros:
- Not begging on the streets for next month's rent money
- Salary bump
- Get to do real lawyer-work alongside some awesome mentors
- Still get to still do some nuts-and-bolts assistant work that teaches me all the admin-side stuff, otherwise known as the shit that not enough attorneys know themselves, thereby making the existence of, and reliance upon, assistants absolutely necessary

The Cons:
- Not a full-time lawyer job still
- No guarantees after 6 months

It's not an ideal situation, but it is so much closer to ideal than the alternative of being out on my ass that it feels silly to even list a "cons" list. 'm incredibly happy to have this opportunity. And the reality is that I'm one of the lucky few from my graduating class that has a paying job in law, so to be anything other than grateful at this point in the market is pissing in the wind, especially if your piss is 100% dumbassness. I had to suppress my idiotic smile for the past 2 days at work so as to not seem surprised at their offer.

Here's to not sleeping on the street.

Jobs + Exams = Terrible Times.

So I got my first rejection notice today. It wasn't a full-on rejection, but it realistically is as far as my circumstances are concerned: "We have filled our paid position, but if you can bring your own funding..."

Gah, it's not that I expect to just fall into whatever sweet gig I want, but I hate rejection. Hate hate hate.

And my first final is tomorrow. Joy to the world. No job, no bird, no money, not really on top of my school-shit, and no drinky-drink until finals are done? Fucking lame.

Job Hunt.

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
~Bertrand Russell

So one of the deals about being in a professional school is that you're supposed to be geared toward being professional, go figure. It is at this part that I officially suck. Specifically, while many of my classmates have been tracking down, interviewing for, and eventually obtaining jobs over the course of the year, I have not. I had a job-hunting plan in place since mid-Fall. I had planned on implementing it no later than January. The plan was to square away Friday afternoons as I didn't have class and I figured it'd be less of a brain drain than doing real classwork, so it a seemed reasonable plan. Fridays since then? 15. Fridays actually spent looking for a job? 0. This wouldn't be so troublesome if I had just slid the job-hunt-work to another day of the week, or made it up on different days here and there. But that didn't happen. Not a day, not even a half.

What was I doing that was so much more important? I could blame it on classwork, moot court, or student group obligations. But that would be a stretch. The truth is I've never had to conduct an actual "job search," I've never had to exist in a professional setting for more than a short stretch (thus am wholly unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the etiquette), and I've been plain fucking lazy about completing the proper documents and looking for places that might be smart enough to take me on.

And now, "desperate" would be the operative word. My primary criteria in an employer right now is receiving payment for my services. You would think this is rather simple, not so much at this stage in the game. I need a notch on the "experience" section of my resume, which gives employers leverage this close to summer. But I'm not worthless. I'm capable, not stupid, and I give a shit. These are valuable traits, I think. How the hell do I know. Personally, if I could get some cash by drinking whisky and cheap beer and having moot-court-esque arguments in bars around the city, I'd much rather be doing that. Guess fucking what, no one is hiring for that position. I know, it was shocking to me too.

Here's hoping I can land something soon and don't end up having to become more familiar with baristanese in order to afford rent this summer.