Thursday, September 30, 2004
Telephone Conversation
ME: Hello, this is Matt.
JUDGE: Hi, Matt. It's Judge _____.
ME: (Heart racing) Hi! How are you doing?
JUDGE: (Calmly) Just fine, thanks.
ME: I've been waiting for your call.
JUDGE: Well, I'm afraid this isn't the call you've been waiting for. I've completed my hiring, and I'm afraid I can't offer you a position to clerk for me. I'm sorry.
ME: OK.
JUDGE: I had an enormous number of very qualified applicants, so this has been quite a process for me. If there's anything I can do for you to help you with other applications, I'd be glad to do so.
ME: All right. Thanks.
JUDGE: Thank you.
ME: Bye.
JUDGE: Bye.
That was my only shot. Out of 46 applications, I only got one interview. I had to beg for it. That one interview went well, I thought. But it was hard to tell if it went well enough. The judge had promised me that he'd call me either way, so I kept waiting for the phone to ring. I figured the earlier it rang, the better the news on the other end would be. My interview was on Friday; he called me on Wednesday.
Thus essentially ended the plans I'd laid out for my life. There are a couple of other tactics I can try (I may mention some later), but pretty much that means that I'm going back to the firm next fall. The good news is that I'll be much richer that way. The bad news is that isn't what I wanted.
I'm bummed for three reasons:
1) I told my friends, family, classmates, and coworkers that I would be applying for a clerkship. It has been and is going to be kind of embarrassing to admit that even with 46 applications, I came up empty.
2) Everyone I've talked to who has done a clerkship says it's a mind-melding intellectual experience that shouldn't be missed. I, the self-styled intellectual, am going to miss it.
3) When considering my long-term future, I keep coming back to the idea that I think I would like to teach at a university some day. As a law grad, the natural thing for me to teach would be law. But clerkships are essentially required prerequisites for teaching positions at any half decent law school in the land.
So now I move on...
JUDGE: Hi, Matt. It's Judge _____.
ME: (Heart racing) Hi! How are you doing?
JUDGE: (Calmly) Just fine, thanks.
ME: I've been waiting for your call.
JUDGE: Well, I'm afraid this isn't the call you've been waiting for. I've completed my hiring, and I'm afraid I can't offer you a position to clerk for me. I'm sorry.
ME: OK.
JUDGE: I had an enormous number of very qualified applicants, so this has been quite a process for me. If there's anything I can do for you to help you with other applications, I'd be glad to do so.
ME: All right. Thanks.
JUDGE: Thank you.
ME: Bye.
JUDGE: Bye.
That was my only shot. Out of 46 applications, I only got one interview. I had to beg for it. That one interview went well, I thought. But it was hard to tell if it went well enough. The judge had promised me that he'd call me either way, so I kept waiting for the phone to ring. I figured the earlier it rang, the better the news on the other end would be. My interview was on Friday; he called me on Wednesday.
Thus essentially ended the plans I'd laid out for my life. There are a couple of other tactics I can try (I may mention some later), but pretty much that means that I'm going back to the firm next fall. The good news is that I'll be much richer that way. The bad news is that isn't what I wanted.
I'm bummed for three reasons:
1) I told my friends, family, classmates, and coworkers that I would be applying for a clerkship. It has been and is going to be kind of embarrassing to admit that even with 46 applications, I came up empty.
2) Everyone I've talked to who has done a clerkship says it's a mind-melding intellectual experience that shouldn't be missed. I, the self-styled intellectual, am going to miss it.
3) When considering my long-term future, I keep coming back to the idea that I think I would like to teach at a university some day. As a law grad, the natural thing for me to teach would be law. But clerkships are essentially required prerequisites for teaching positions at any half decent law school in the land.
So now I move on...
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