This Ain't Rock and Roll, This is...Genocide

I am, I always have been, and always will be in love with David Bowie.

Cover Letters!

Dear Sir or Madam,

For electronic communications, "Re: Law Clerk Position" is better. Best is "Dear (specific person).

Please accept my application for a position in your firm. I am a recent graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law interested in pursuing a career in (your practice area).

The standard introduction and rather boring. I need something that will set me apart from other candidates. Something that will get the hiring partner to sit up straighter and read closer. The mood I'm going for is "polite but assertive." Too far would be "ridiculous and cheesy, like a used car salesman."

Possibilities:

Because you are looking for a motivated self-starter with a strong writing ability to work at your office, I believe that I could make an immediate and lasting contribution to your firm

Too many ideas are in this sentence. It's too unwieldy. I like the strong opening though. "Since you are lookng for someone good to hire, I am applying (because I am who you are looking for)." Still too unwieldy. Maybe this sentence structure doesn't work. One more try:

Since you are looking for a motivated self-starter to work at your office, I believe that I could make an immediate and lasting contribution to your firm.

Actually sounds...pretty good.
Follow it up with who you are and why they should care:

I am a recent graduate of the University of Virgina School of Law interested in interested in pursuing a career in tax law.

Slightly less snappy than the previous sentence. It's not bad. "I am a recent graduate of X" is what most employers would want to know. Having my goals up front is good as well. "Pursuing a career in tax law" is pretty mushy. Is there something more specific that I want to do?

Next I need to explain how I am a good candidate for this position, backed by specific examples of accomplishments.

magic deck ideas

Viridian Shaman + Umbral Mantle must be one of the easiest two card combos. Both cost 3 and together (plus 2 mana) you get infinite mana and power/toughness. It's only beat by Painter's Servant + Grindstone, which creates its own win condition.

The only problem is that the fastest you can get the combo to work is turn five. There are probably already significant threats to deal with by turn five. Your opponent has probably already drawn a removal spell or a counterspell by turn five (and countered one of your combo pieces). And if you don't win on the turn you combo (you haven't drawn a win condition), it becomes increasingly difficult to protect your combo.

Here's how a typical game might look:
T1 ?
T2 ?
T3 viridian shaman (2g)
T4 umbral mantle (3) + 2 mana. win condition.

So I need to have both combo pieces AND a win condition AND five mana by turn 4/5 to win reliably. This means: 4 * llanowar elf, 4 or 3 * fertile ground.

To fix the mana base, need 4* seaside citadel.

Alternatively cut the wargates altogether.
Instead:
4* viridian joiner
4* umbral mantle
4* drift of phantasms
2* whispersilk cloak
4* counterspell/broken ambitions
4* oona's gatewarden OR traproot kami
4* llanowar
4* fertile ground
4* mulldrifter
1* garruk
1* glen elendra archmage

Lands: 4* breeding pool (oh I wish)
4*flooded grove (I wish as well) or 4*yavimaya coast
x* forests
x* islands
simic signet?

(Instead of 4* simic growth chamber and 4* seaside citadel)

other deck ideas:
1. sigil deck. need recurring enchantments (especially things like prison term, faith's fetters, curse of chains)

2. gilt-leaf archdruid. There must be a way to abuse this card and it basically involves mirrorweave or shield of velis veil
3. where ancients tread + nightmare + stampeding widebeests.

Mantra

I can't let myself surf the internet. That path leads nowhere.

procrastination

In the past month that I haven't been applying to jobs, I have instead:
1. played Diablo II (I'm in the middle of an untwinked nightmare run)
2. listened to 5 or 6 podcasts (most of which update multiple times a week) religiously
3. constructed 6 new magic decks, after dismantling the previous 6.
4. read (and commented on) several libertarian blogs concerning the health care reform debate
5. read several depressing blog posts/news stories on the state of the job market and how to get a job in such terrible economic times
6. slept 10 hours a day.

I've been slowly picking through Godel, Escher, Bach, trying to make sure I understand everything before going on. I would like to finish the book soon, so I can read through The Wealth of Nations.

After that: 6 Not So Easy Pieces and then maaaaybe some Rawls. I would need to blog about it though, to keep things clear. Rawls is a HUGE BITCH. Perhaps I should start with Plato first?

One thing that might help is to eliminate any distraction besides writing. Writing a blog is not so different than writing a cover letter. Both are about myself, both have the same concise, but eloquent prose, both are intensely personal without sounding embarrassing or desperate, and both (should) exude honesty, self-confidence, and intelligence.

Job Seeker's Journal, Day One

On UT and UH Law symplicity sites, there are a number of postings for law clerk positions that start next fall. These positions pose a problem:

First: I should apply for them, even if I won't get them. I'm only worried about a) the cover letter and b) the letters of recommendation. Clerking is a great job and it only ties me up for one year.

Second: I have a job for next year, which is good as long as I can find temp work in the meantime. And the great thing is that it doesn't matter what kind of temp work as long as it pays money.

Third: I know I shouldn't worry about this, but what about moving in with Tom?

Fourth: I have this instinctual need to keep my options open but this is probably a bad idea. The instinct probably comes from a) extreme risk-aversion or b) not wanting to have to do anything or a combination of the two. These are bad qualities that are unsustainable in the long run (not doing anything and never taking risks ultimately leads to death) and should not be considered.

Verdict: Apply.

Another problem: should I apply for positions in Austin? The answer is yes. The fears that hold me back are:
1. not being able to afford an apartment (money should not be a big issue)
2. mom and dad not liking the fact that i'm not in Houston (they won't care that much as long as I have a job)
3. not being able to start immediately (hey, maybe I could negotiate a start date with employers or work out some other arrangement)

Verdict: Apply to these as well.

breaking it down

Strategies for finding a job:

1. send resumes out to job openings
2. mass mailing: need to break this down
3. networking: need to break this down
4. targeted search: need to break this down (related: applying for internships)
(this also applies to federal judicial clerkships)
5. job fairs: need to break this down

focus on 1.

YATTA!

I sent the email to Prof. Allaire! YAY! One down!

As for updates on self improvement, I really think I need to create a schedule for M-F.
Wednesdays can be errand days for any errands I have to do during the week. For every thing else, Saturdays are fine.

Suppose I sleep 8 hrs a night. The other 16 hours multiplied by 7 days equals 112 hrs.
9 to 5 M through F is 40 hours and 16 hours on Sat and Sun are 32 hours for the weekend.
That leaves 40 hours as all other time during the week, before 9 and after 5.

I think I should basically split my time M through F, 9-5 on two things: looking for a job and planning a career.

Looking for a job means a paying position, temporary or permanent in this order:
1. Legal jobs, jobs that target JDs.
(Can I get legal experience or exercise skills that will help me as a lawyer specifically?)
2. Paralegal jobs, jobs that involve management skills
(Can I get general, non-technical skills or experiences that will help me in for different types of careers?)
3. Tutoring jobs in law or mathematics
4. Temp work - temp agency

Starting in Late Sept to October:
5. Clerical work, receptionists, working at a University
6. Retail work in the spring/cypress area

Back to Square One

I skipped two days (three if you count Monday) if you didn't notice. This is pretty typical of me--I just got very very afraid of applying for jobs and decided to find other things to do instead. Mostly playing Diablo II.

I'm still not ready to apply but each passing day means fewer opportunities. So I have to force myself to do it. Or something.

I think what I need to remember most is that it's okay to take things one step at a time.

Take for instance, emailing Professor A back. I could do that right now.

But what should I say?

Here are the things I need to do, in no particular order:
1. Thank him. What am I thankful for? His concern about me, his offer to help.
2. Ask about the person who is about to start her 3rd year at Mary Baldwin. She's a PEG? If she needs anything, she can talk to me. I don't know what I have to offer though.
3. Ask him if he can get me in touch with someone. Who? He says people who are doing or teaching law. What do I want to get out of meeting with someone?
4. Tell him how I'm doing. I don't want to complain. What should I send as my message instead? How close to the truth should it be?

Unfinished Business for Tuesday

Here are the things I need to do:
- Log onto the Texas Workforce Commission site and, under "Job Match" fill out the additional skills section.
- Figure out the answer to this question, from Robert Half Legal: What is your work objective?
- Request an official transcript after Wednesday, when the transcript service comes back online
- Finish the title examiner job application on the first american website. I need to write a cover letter.

(UVA Alumni career services here: http://law5.law.virginia.edu/alumni/career.htm)

I didn't accomplish any of the three things I planned for today. Therefore, they are the goals for tomorrow.

1. Apply to at least 3 positions (send resume and cover letter)
2. Create a spreadsheet for listing places applied to + status of application
3. Respond to Professor A's email. Say that you have taken the bar and are looking for a job, preferably in Houston. Say that you would like a referral to lawyers working in houston for an informational interview, and thank him.
(Defrost the stew meat)

1.
a. Write a cover letter for the title examiner position and send an application
b. Send a cover letter and resume for the Legal Editorial Assistant position
c. Send a cover letter and resume for the real property law clerk position.
d. You may want to call about these positions first to see if they are open, and get details about them. Plan out what to say during the call first. CALL, DO NOT EMAIL.
2.
a. Remember to add the jobs already applied to online. There's one at robert half legal, 2 from gibson arnold, 2 from warren recruiting
b. Add a list of jobs to apply for. Make a scale of 1-4 (want to work) and 1-4 (meets qualifications)
c. make dates and deadlines for followup VERY VISIBLE. Followups should be one week after applying to see if they received the application, then no more than two weeks after that to see if they're thinking of me.
d. Have all the contact information ready.
3.
a. I need to figure out how to describe 1. my current situation and 2. what kind of jobs I'm looking for. Or basically who I want to meet with.
b. ask for an informal interview. In order to get more information about the job market, what being a lawyer is like.

more on harris county jobs here: http://www.co.harris.tx.us/hrrm/Employment.aspx

more search listings here: http://harriscountyjobs.org/s/find-legal-jobs-in-harris-county-texas

instructions on the texas application for employment http://www.twc.state.tx.us/jobs/gvjb/stateapp_er.html

Monday Review

Noon:
- Submitted my resume to four legal recruiting sites, but their job postings seem sparse. I have actually applied to four positions from these sites. There's no employer information, so I'm not sure how to follow up on the applications.
- Updated my resume on USAJOBS and their postings are definitely sparse. Especially for legal jobs and jobs in Texas
- Printed out a number of job postings from UH's job bank that look very promising. Need to apply to at least three of these by the end of today.
- Bought a three-month subscription to the UT job bank. (Remember to share the job information with friends!)

Resolutions:
- To check the UH and UT job bank sites every day (UVA too, I suppose)
- To update my resume on the PMF site and search PMF postings every week
- To register with general job searching sites, such as Monster.com and Indeed.com
- (Pick up some more sea salt (ionized))

Update: 9:30
Haven't done anything since I last posted. Surfed the internet until 4 and then I really started to get anxious, so I went to sleep.
(Dinner was crispy salmon and asparagus spears. I think the salmon would cook faster at room temperature and I probably needed to add more salt. Also you couldn't really taste the thyme.)

Still have time left in the day though.

For Monday

1. Apply to at least 3 positions (send resume and cover letter)
2. Create a spreadsheet for listing places applied to + status of application
3. Respond to Professor A's email. Say that you have taken the bar and are looking for a job, preferably in Houston. Say that you would like a referral to lawyers working in houston for an informational interview, and thank him.
4. Call ATT if the phones still don't work
(defrost the salmon)

other:
- hookah tomorrow to relax?
- if the sprinkler works, call the sprinkler guy and tell him you don't need the repairs done
- get an appointment with a dentist

Schedules!

I have a weird relationship with scheduling. I have tried, in the past, to divide my day into sections, and dictate ahead of time what I should be doing in each section. I never follow them. It might work for at most, a day. I'm really not sure how I got so far in my life with so little time management. However, if I ever do make a plan to do X and find out that I am prevented from doing X, this really ruins my whole day. Instead of doing Y, the logical alternative to X, I do nothing. It's as if I am a robot that shuts down after finding that it has no more tasks it can complete.

But I'm making an effort to improve myself, starting with facing down the things that give me anxiety and writing about them.

- I will make an effort to go to sleep by midnight each night and I will make an effort to wake up at 8 AM each morning.
- I have no more than an hour in the morning for a morning ritual. If I want to, I can drink coffee, eat breakfast, surf a few sites, but only until 9 AM.
- Every night I make a list of three or four things to accomplish tomorrow. Every morning at 9 AM I check the list.
- (Also defrost any meat for cooking dinner at 9 AM.)
- At noon, review the list. If there are things on the list I haven't accomplished, I need to write down exactly why I haven't accomplished them and what I did instead.
- This process is repeated at 3 PM.
- (At 5 PM, I'll start making dinner. Because I'm also trying to learn how to cook, I need to write down what I'm making and how it turned out.)
- After dinner and cleaning up, (around 7 PM) I review the list again. If there are things on the list I haven't accomplished, I need to break down the item further into doable parts.
- Once again, before bed, I have to make a new list for the next day.

Self-Improvement, Part One

(This will be a series of short posts cataloging my attempts to turn my life around.)

Major Goals:
- Get a job by the end of the year (2009)
BONUS POINTS: Get a job by the time parents arrive in October
- Move in with Tom by the end of next year (2010)
BONUS POINTS: Be moved in (with Tom) and have a job at the new location by the end of next year
- Find the right career for me by the end of next year (2010)
BONUS POINTS: Enroll in classes or training needed for that career by the end of next year (2010)

Right now I have three major problems: not having a job, not living with Tom, not knowing what I want to do with my life.

The first one is fixable immediately. The second is more problematic since Tom does not want to leave Charleston yet and I don't want to live in Charleston. No offense to Charleston residents, but it's a bad job market at the moment and I'd rather live in a bigger city. Also, Tom doesn't want to stay in Charleston. What this means is basically, I need to wait for Tom to either leave or be willing to leave, OR move to Charleston regardless. It is unfortunate to tie one's fortunes so closely to another, but humans like to pair-bond so I just have to live with it.

The third problem is one that I could start working on immediately. It just doesn't seem as urgent to me as the first problem. This is likely that problem of cognition where people devalue the importance of a task just because the deadline is in the future. Humans didn't evolve to do extensive planning because the environment was either stable or unpredictable. It wasn't until humans took extensive control of their surroundings (creating cities and industry) that the future environment became predictable and even changeable. (Caveat: I am neither historian nor evolutionary biologist, so this is all conjecture on my part.) How I get around this problem of cognition will be in another self-improvement post, I suppose.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I think about halfway through law school, I realized that I wasn't interested in practicing law. I made the decision to continue in the legal field anyway, and since then I've been returning to that decision over and over again. Of course I'm not bound by a decision I made almost two years ago. At any time, I could leave and pursue a different sort of career. But starting over is has its problems as well.

Stay:

- Earning potential: My most significant asset at the moment is my law degree. I have the potential to earn higher wages in this field more than any other

- Tailored Resume: Because of my meager work history, I don't have anything to offer besides academic experiences and my undergraduate degree in political science is not very useful for finding a job. Neither is a B.A. in Math. So I'd be competing with any other newly graduated college student for non-legal jobs--any many of those new graduates can't find anything other than retail or waitressing.

- There is the argument that legal skils are useful for other fields. Good writing skills are certainly important. But besides that, I don't think the ability to "think like a lawyer" is considered in asset to most employers and, in fact, lawyers are treated with certain degree of mistrust.
- Counterpoint: There's the possibiltiy that I could convince potential employers my legal training should give me an edge over other candidates.

Go:

- Inevitability: Why spend time in a field you don't like? If I'm going to pursue a career in, say, industrial design, I should start researching industrial design. If I'm going to be a computer programmer, I should start learning programming languages. Why waste time?
- The answer is basically money. I don't have the money to acquire the training and education yet.
- How much money are you going to get in half-assed legal jobs anyway? If you make 30k a year (and that's an IF), you can save up 6k a year. Do you want to spend all your savings on school?
- Well, I also need the job experience. At least with legal jobs, I know where to start looking. I don't even know 1. how to find what I want to do and 2. how to start a career in that field.

- Anxiety: Starting over reduces all that anxiety you have about being a lawyer. However, this might be replaced by other anxiety about finding a new career path.

Plus there's the fact that I want to move in with Tom. I'm not sure how that even fits into the equation, but it does convince me that I should just get temporary jobs and not commit myself to living in Houston. I don't want to keep my options open forever, but I want to move in with Tom. I really, desperately want this and while I can't at the moment, I want to be able to with minimal adverse effects when I finally can move in with him.

It's funny how when you are faced with one thing on your to do list, it's pretty easy to just do it and then cross it off. But if you're faced with, say, twenty things to do in the next week, crossing off any one item on your list becomes impossible and you'd rather just blow it all off and sleep.

I flew back to C'ville Sunday night after a weekend with Tom and immediately sunk into that post-visit low. When I'm with Tom, I forget about law school, about not having a job waiting for me after graduation, and about any one of the million things I have constantly on my to do lists. But these commitments don't go away, they're always there waiting for me when I get back.

Today I raised my hand and spoke in class. I spoke in clear, articulated sentences without unnatural pauses or filler words. I sounded confident and smart as I explained the compromise between large and small states that resulted in the bicameral arrangement of the two houses of congress. It was an easy question, I'll admit, but no one in the class was actually answering it. I tell myself this is a sign I'm changing, opening up, becoming more like the person I think I used to be--outgoing, interested in others, more involved with life. I'm not actually sure that I was ever outgoing, but I sure as hell wasn't always so afraid of living.

It's not that everything is better when I'm with Tom. I'm happier, sure. Less lonely. But I still have problems and I still berate myself for any little mistake--like assuming I was friends with his friends, when I'm really not, I'm just The Girlfriend.

I entertain escapist fantasies. One day, I'm really going to act on them. It just seems inevitable at this point.

List of current addictions:
- final fantasy tactics advance
- jalapeno chips
- watching other people play video games
- logical certainty