Internal Deadlines

In the three years since graduating from Cal, I have watched many--indeed, most--of my close friends struggle with un(der)employment.  I felt very fortunate to be riding out (at least part of) the recession sheltered in the safe retreat of law school.  This year, as my graduation from Georgetown approached with no job offer in sight, I struggled with feelings of doubt, fear, and disappointment.  Doubt about whether I had chosen the right career path.  Fear of never breaking into my chosen field.  Disappointment in myself, as someone who has derived a great deal of her self-worth from past successes.

Then, in May, my studies for the bar exam began.  I reset my internal deadline for finding a job to September, one month after the bar exam, and the deadline for my Plan B: accepting a post-JD stipend from Georgetown to do three months of volunteer work with a non-profit organization.  No job materialized; indeed, not even an interview.

I accepted a volunteer position with the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, which I began in September.  It is a wonderful place to volunteer, and I am glad to have this opportunity to expand my knowledge of refugee law.  I have done research on marital rape in Chad, domestic violence in Slovakia, and repressive social mores in Afghanistan.  I drafted a record summary for an amicus brief that is in the works. I am currently writing a practice advisory on the one-year bar to asylum.  This is the type of work that I want to be doing, in the perfect location (San Francisco), and yet, I lack satisfaction.

I feel the pressure of my revised internal deadline for finding work: the end of November.  This is when my stipend runs out (unless, as has been hinted to as a possibility, Georgetown finds some more funding). This is also when I will learn whether I passed the bar exam.  Right now, one of the only things keeping me from completely beating myself up about my unemployment is that I know that non-profit organizations do not have the resources in this economy to hire people who do not have their law licenses.  Once I pass the bar, that excuse will be gone.  Or, even worse, perhaps I will not pass the bar, and will have to begin my studies--and the hellish waiting process--all over again.  Either way, November is going to be a rocky month for my legal moxie.

Today, I stumbled across this feature in New York Magazine: The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright: My screwed, coddled, self-absorbed, mocked, surprisingly resilient generation.  The article explores the psyche of twenty-somethings who are facing un(der)employment in the recession, forced to settle for menial work, move back in with their parents, and reassess why we all worked so hard in high school and beyond.  A lot of the article resonated with me.  It served as a good reminder of the folly of resting my self-worth upon my career.  There is so much more to me than my job (or lack thereof).

Since moving home in May, I have been hesitant to put down any roots in the South Bay, not knowing if or when I might be pulled away to the Peninsula, San Francisco, or the East Bay at the drop of a hat for an employment opportunity.  I have felt particularly lost not integrating into a new religious community, after such meaningful experiences at Cal and Georgetown.  I talked with my mom about it, and realized that I was wasting valuable time by not embracing a group in the interim, if only for a few months.  To that end, I joined up with a few South Bay Newman alumnae, and we've started a Catholic women's book club.  We've met twice so far, discussing chapters from The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality. Then, at Mass on Sunday at St. Justin in Santa Clara, I found out that their young adult group (ages 18-40) is having a meet and greet next week to welcome newcomers.  It's amazing how God can open the eyes of my heart to community when I least expect it.

I don't want to waste any more time.  For the past five months, I have felt as though my life would be on pause until I found full-time, paid employment as a licensed attorney.  I have been operating on this assumption that no one will see my value as a human being until I have a legitimate response to the seemingly innocuous ice breaker, "So, what do you do for a living?"  There is no need to feel ashamed of my unemployment, so long as I am doing and living.  My internalization of my job search as a deadline, that at some point the acceptability of my unemployment will expire, is an unproductive, self-defeatist attitude.  My life does not begin when I get my first job.  I've been doing things for a living for 25 years, and counting.