I haven't posted in who knows how long, and am only doing so now because of a number of factors too boring to go into. Suffice to say I can't think of anything better to do with my time -- though I'm sure there are many things. As a rough guess, since my last post I have gotten through my second year of law school, seen my first musical ever, taken up running even though it still hurts my knees, started my summer internship, gotten into the exchange program through UCLA Law to study in Japan for next semester, and just today helped my parents buy a new plasma TV and get it set up in their room. Now I want a new TV.
But before a TV, I need money. And if I had money, I'd probably spend it on travel rather than a TV. But really, any kind of income would be nice right now. My credit card bill that covered the period of time after finals was a bit scary. I guess I went a little overboard with the relaxation. The bill did include the costs of gas and a smog check for my car, but it certainly doesn't account for everything. Eating out really adds up.
In that sense, it is nice to be back home -- I don't ever have to eat out, and I don't have to cook. This comes along with other chores, but in the end, I suppose they are a small price to pay. Besides, mowing the lawn is exercise. Right?
There is a part of the Los Gatos Creek Trail that runs through a park near my house, and I used to ride around it on my bicycle. I no longer have a bicycle, and I remember it being short, so I decided a few days ago to try and run it. I thought it was around 2 or 3 miles. I found out later it was more like 4 or 5, but who's counting. No wonder I was so tired at the end. But I think it was a good run, and I'll have to do it again soon to stave off the approach of the belly fat. Just another sign of age...
It also totally breaks the formatting of my page, but I'm just going to leave it the way it is.
I think this is one of the greatest comics ever.
As usual, I haven't posted in months. There is no particular reason for this, other than laziness. The story of my life.
Clearly, a lot has happened, and I'm sure most people know already, but I shall recap as quickly as I can. I never did end up meeting up with my friend from the last post due to communication and other issues, and then somehow made it through finals. I then spent a few days doing as little as possible, and then drove home to pack. I flew to Japan, made the mistake of not taking the bus to my home for the next three months, and finally arrived, exhausted.
My living quarters while in Japan were paid for by yours truly, and were ridiculously expensive, but I think it was worth it. The apartment was fully furnished, and came with nearly everything I would need to start out - dishes, utensils, towels, knives, pots and pans, even some soap and shampoo to get started. Even better, a maid came to clean the place every week, so all I had to worry about was getting dressed for work. Ah, what a life. I wish I could go back.
A short time in my long-distance relationship fell apart, but it was probably already doomed long before I landed in Japan. It was probably better that way regardless, as I was totally free to abuse my status as a lawyer-to-be from the US to impress all the girls. I won't say much more than that, but it was a good life, and I was very sad to have to leave it. The work was also fairly interested, as were the people, but that's not saying too much.
I thought I had already had all the weird foods I could find in Japan last time I was there, but I managed to eat what basically amounts to intestine hot pot, standard hot pot but with a soy milk base, whale sashimi, whale BRAINS, fried turtle, and the best - turtle blood, cut with some wine. It was quite an experience, and aside from the weird foods, I ate very well. I proceeded to spend way too much on a gym membership, new ties, new suits, new shirts, new socks, a pair of new shoes, and various electronic devices. I should mention that my apartment came with cable, and HD satellite. And yet now here I sit in the US, paying to suffer.
After all the fun I had in Japan, I cut the timing very close and flew back the same day as on campus interviews started (for next summer's internships). All that really needs to be said about those interviews is for the first day, when I was asked when I got in, I could say "Today."
As everyone surely knows by now, the financial markets have collapsed, and with them, so has the legal job market. I have up until now been entirely unable to secure a job for next summer, and my dream of working too much for way too much money will probably have to be postponed. So it goes, I suppose. Law firms are laying off attorneys left and right, cutting back hiring, and one or two have completely dissolved. It's a bad market, and some perfectly qualified people are suffering for it.
Anyone want to get me a job at a large law firm?
I have reached a new milestone in my life - I hit the $75 limit on pumping gas with a credit card. I think I will go cry in the corner to celebrate. I have to pump premium, but $4.15/gal? Are you serious? I remember when gas hit $1.20/gal and I thought they were going to bankrupt me. I used to be able to fill up with $10. How times change. That was a relatively short 10 or so years ago.
That reminds me, since I am class of 1999, there is theoretically a 10 year reunion. However, not really having kept in touch with many people, I don't expect an invitation. I'm not sure I'd want to go, but maybe it would it be worth it just to tell people that I am going to become a lawyer. Or maybe that's not such a good thing.
I have discovered that getting a work visa is quite the pain in the ass. The most streamlined process is sending your entire life in paper form to get a certificate of eligibility from Japan's Immigration Office, then going to the nearest consulate to apply for the actual visa. Unfortunately, I discovered that I was out of visa pages. This is both good and bad. Good because I have always wanted to fill up my passport, and bad because not only did I make a useless trip to the consulate (which is downtown and a pain in the ass to drive to), I had to pay $60 to get 24 more pages put in my passport. $60! I have never purchased such expensive paper. With all that taken care of, I had to go back to the consulate, give them my passport and paperwork, pay $4/10 minutes for parking in the building, leave, and come back a few days later to pick it up. I didn't park under the building on my third trip back. In what I consider proof of my own pet theory that there is balance to the universe, on my third trip back I was able to park at a failed meter. I'm not sure it was worth the trouble, but you take what you can get.
On my third and final trip, there was one other person waiting in the visa line with a ton of passports. I, being the socialite that I am, struck up a conversation, and I found out that this guy was trying to break into the music business, and was working for a small independent music label. On this particular trip, he was getting all the visas in order for a 60s or 70s (I really don't know or remember) group called the Tower of Power, or something like that. The big moneymaker for the label is apparently REO Speedwagon. Regardless, I have never heard of this Tower of Flower Shower Power or whatever, but they were touring in Japan. Playing in Tokyo, I think. What a world. And that is my story for the month, the rest of it being taken up with finals.
Oh, and I suppose it's significant that a friend I haven't seen in probably four years is in the area, and instead of studying for my final on Monday, I am meeting her and one other friend for dinner on Sunday night. A lot has happened since we all met in Japan almost 5 (!!!) years ago. And she's getting married this year. Maybe I'm getting old.
I've decided that I only post when I have too much time on my hands. This could be a sign of my developing workaholic tendencies, and that worries me. As any good teenager, I spent my younger years thinking I knew more than my parents and wanting to be different from them. Imagine my horror when I realized one day that I felt unproductive because I had just watched TV and played video games all day. Feeling unproductive means that you want to be productive, and wanting to be productive is the first step to becoming a workaholic. And here I had told myself I would never turn into my dad.
It may or may not be obvious, but these past months have been incredibly busy. Never before have I felt such pressure. It has been a neverending stream of things to take care of, things to worry about, networking events, receptions, information sessions, papers to write, cases to read, relationships to maintain, food to cook, finals to study for, and hanging above it all, knowing that I alone have responsibility for my future. Maybe that's what growing up is, but I've always had short-term goals to focus on with no thought for what would come afterwards. Grades and activities in high school were just preparation for college applications, college was just preparation for getting a job (this one didn't work out so well), and even taking the LSAT was for getting out of the job I did manage to get. While there is still the short-term goal of grades in law school, everything ultimately points to a career and a future, with no defined end. Now I have to be responsible? Sounds like a lot of work.
I have found one extra thing to waste my time, and that is the newly created
Stuff White People Like blog. Going to undergrad in UC Berkeley, a lot of it rings true, although I will probably never truly understand it. But I can't let it distract me from lamenting my life. On one hand I need the pressure to feel like I'm accomplishing something, but on the other hand the feeling of accomplishment is fleeting. Ignorance really is bliss, but you can't just unlearn what you already have learned. Pity, that.
I haven't posted in a while, and this is in spite of actual news to report in my life. The short version is that I win. I suppose I should elaborate.
After finding my first real job, and moving from being a temp to a permanent position, I found myself without a goal to shoot for, and got restless. Looking back, this is a common theme in my life, and I am always happiest when I have a concrete, achievable goal. I suppose it is the sense of accomplishment from the ostensible success of meeting a self-imposed goal. But the why is not as important as the success. I set a number of goals for myself once I had been a permanent employee for a while, not realizing at the time my motivations for doing so. I hesitate to call them resolutions, because I don't make them at the beginning of the year; rather, I make them whenever the fancy strikes me.
In 2006, my goals were 1) to take the LSAT and do well (score 170+, a level high enough to get me into a good law school even with my GPA), and 2) to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 2, and pass it. I met both goals, and the next year proceeded to make it my goal to get into a top 20 law school. I did that, somehow, and for a while my life was taken over by law school. It still is, really, but I found a new goal for the end of 2007 and whatever it took in 2008.
Everyone in law school is encouraged to do an internship for the two summers we have, and the aim of most is to land that coveted law firm internship. Most do this in the second summer, but a few have been known to do it in the first summer. It was indicated to me that this was difficult without a very good GPA for the first semester, but seeing as how over the long term I want to work internationally, I made it my goal to secure a job overseas. This was always a long shot, but I've worked long enough to know that I wouldn't be satisfied with just a normal position. I can't spend all my energy focused inward, on issues only in the US. So of course, even though many people told me it was too hard, and my peers said that they were just going to focus on studying for finals, I pushed hard.
Potential employers are not even allowed to contact first-year students until December first, to allow students to focus on school, but this date falls right before finals. At this point, there are those that basically lived in the law library, and I could perhaps count myself among them. However, before I embarked on that terrible journey, I spent two days sending out email after email and customizing many cover letters. I got a few emails back quickly rejecting me due to the firm not hiring first-years or just being full. I got many more actual paper letters also rejecting me. You get used to rejection after a while. I decided I was going to collect rejection letters and see how many I could get. Imagine my surprise when I got an email back that wasn't a rejection.
An office of a large firm in Japan wanted to have a phone interview with me. Really? I've always wanted to work in Japan, after spending a year there on exchange. I failed in that quest in my year there, and had pretty much given up on it. All those years spent on Japanese, for what? The time spent studying for the JLPT? All so I could put it on my resume, eventually go to law school, send an email with my resume as a total long shot to a firm in Japan, have a phone interview, and (apparently) not completely bungle the portion where they tested my Japanese. I cannot begin to describe how surreal this was for me, that all that time spent culminated in an offer to spend a summer in Japan, working. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, but really, it's amazing. It still does not feel real, and likely will not even after I obtain my work visa. It probably won't feel real until I first step into that office and meet the people I've only talked to for 20 minutes on the phone.
The lesson I take from this is that I can, I really can accomplish anything I put my mind to. Every experience I have, every new thing I learn, it may one day become useful, even if at the time it doesn't seem to apply. After all, what use is Japanese at a biotech company? My year spent in Japan was a mere 4 years ago. How quickly things change.
I've told a ton of people, but I'm sure I've missed some people. I keep forgetting who I've told. So I post it here, where no one will read it anyway, but I feel like I'm accomplishing something. And that's good enough for me.
As I approach the end of my altogether-too-short vacation, I would like to say I spent my time reflecting on important worldly and otherwise cosmopolitan matters. I did not do so, however. Instead, I spent a large amount of time watching Discovery HD (which I suppose is now called HD Theater for some reason), National Geographic HD, and playing video games. I spent a few days wherein I never left the house nor contemplated doing so.
Those were glorious days, and I wish I had more of them.
Seeing as how I am in law school, I could write about law, or cases I've read, or even how it has changed my outlook on the world. But frankly, I spent my 2.5 weeks of vacation apparently attempting to forget law school, so I'm not about to start getting back to it early. Instead, I will write about how it is coming down in buckets over here, and how I will have to drive home in the rain. For those of you familiar with the path from the Bay Area to the evil empire, you must past through a one-lane section of annoyance called 152. Which was apparently partially flooded last night. I am really looking forward to that. California is getting hit with a massive storm at the moment, and even Southern California is getting pounded, or so I'm told. While I like rain if I don't have to go anywhere, I have developed a healthy distaste for driving in it. I didn't mind in my invincible youth, but with the disappearance of my mid-20s, I have also developed an unhealthy sense of my mortality.
I do perhaps exaggerate slightly, as I'm not quite morbid enough to contemplate my own death, but a few run-ins with the phenomenon known as hydroplaning were enough to put me on notice that driving as I usually do in the rain is not the best course of action. What this means is that I will have to drive down to LA at a much slower pace than my usual possibly illegal speeds (I'm just following traffic!), meaning that I must be on the road for longer than I would like. Thus, I will have longer to build my road rage, and therefore, will be that much less happy than if it was not raining during my drive. I know you all care, but I felt like complaining. I try not to do it much, but if something good happens, I don't tend to post about it.
On the good side of things, I managed to go skiing ($96? really?) for what is likely the only time this season, and I really need to get my own skis. It was fun flying down the mountain, though. Now I just need to find someone willing to tempt fate as I was so I wouldn't have to stop and wait for people. I still don't really understand skiing alone, though. I did enjoy going at my own pace, but I don't think I could do it for a whole day. The balance is hard to strike, I suppose, between a proper pace and good company. Still, it was fun barreling down the black at speeds that no one else in the group would dare attempt. That short two minute run was probably the best part of the day. Then I got a cold and a killer headache, but we won't talk about that. My amazing immune system fought it off within a day or so.
I doubt I'll make another post for a while, and I've been really bad about contacting people, but I can blame it all on law school. It really does consume your life, and the only people that can really understand are the ones that also go to law school. So it goes.
Oh, I suppose there was that time I got completely wasted after my last final, but I don't remember all of the night, and I'm not sure I would like it recounted regardless. At least I didn't have alcohol poisoning. I think.
