catching flies with honey

The plus side of being so slow at work right now is having lots of extra time at night with Timmy. Friday night we enjoyed dinner, chatting, singing and bath time together. Once he was all clean and snuggly, we were ready to read a book before bedtime.

I told him that I would read him one book, so he picked out Make Way for Ducklings. He cuddled with me throughout the whole thing, but when I finished the story and put the book away, he sprang to life and asked me to read How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Being the mean mom that I am, I said no.

Immediately, his whole face screwed up and he burst out with the saddest sob I've ever seen. Unless he is getting much better at manipulating me, I think he was just really sad to not get to read the Grinch rather than not getting his way or stalling. I didn't want to end our great night on a bad note, so I said, "Timmy, you want Mommy to read the Grinch?"

He said "Please!" I smiled and said, "Ok, but this is really the last book tonight."
He smiled back at me and said "Thank you!"

He then proceeded to snuggle up to me, and when I said, "the end" he immediately put his head down on the bed and sighed contentedly.

The unprompted "please" and "thank you" (and in the context of something other than asking for a snack) was a first and it made my heart melt. He's always been a sweetheart, but when he shows that he understands why we say certain things and what effect those words have on people, I feel like I'm doing ok in preparing him for the world. Like when he said "I love you" out of nowhere and leaned over to give me a kiss. I can't get enough of that little gentleman.

Charting my Course

Every few months, someone at the firm sends around an email to all junior associates, asking us to rank our preferences for departments and the practice areas within those departments. I think my preferences have been different each time I've filled it out. And really, it's not because I try things and end up not liking them. It hasn't been busy enough for that to happen. It's mostly due to my attempts at picking "the right" practice. The one that will give me the best training for a good job post-Big Law and yet not make me hate my life for the time that I'm here. The one that will leave me with options. The one that I will enjoy and be good at. It's a little bit ridiculous that almost two years after graduating law school, I'm still trying to figure out what kind of law I want to practice.

To the extent that other people out there are trying to figure this out for themselves, or have been there, I thought it might be good to write down my thoughts while I'm at the beginning of this process.

The closest thing I can compare picking a practice area to is choosing your major in college. In college, I simply picked the subject that I was most interested in, literally without a thought as to what I would do with it after school. That is how I ended up with a political science degree and no marketable skills as a college graduate. This is why it seems important to learn from my mistakes here, and pick a practice area that I enjoy but that will also open doors for me in any future jobs.

I know that I am more interested in transactional work than litigation. I like that "the other side" is usually rational and amicable, even when toughly negotiating. I like that a unique situation just means stretching your precedent to come up with an agreement or contract rather than being at the mercy of how a Judge or Arbitrator interprets the arguments and case law. I like that I don't have to research case law very often. But I also know that transactional work at a junior associate level is not the most interesting work out there.

So at the firm, my choices basically come down to Corporate or Finance work. Banking finance might be the most mindless (early on), but the people in the department are incredible and I love working with them. Restructuring is a very small group in the Finance Dept. and I like the work and the people. I have yet to actually do any Corporate work, but I think it might be slightly more interesting at a junior level. Securities was my favorite class in law school and I think M&A would be really exciting. The counterpoint is that Corporate is known to have the very worst lifestyle in terms of last minute emergencies and late nights/weekends. I do not know the corporate people as well as the finance people, but my initial impression is that I have more in common with the latter group. Of course, Corporate associates are known for having the best path to good in-house jobs after several years at a big firm. I'm not really sure where finance associates go after Big Law.

My struggle right now is trying to figure out whether I want to assume that an in-house job of some sort is my goal and try to do Corporate work, even if that might make the next few years a little more stressful. I think I might be a little bit happier while I'm at the firm doing finance, but I don't want to do that and be stuck with no real exit strategy. Luckily for me, I have two years to figure this out. It's not something that I stress out over, but I do keep it in the back of my mind because I want to actively consider all possibilities and make an informed choice.

There is always the possibility that I would transition to a non-legal job after working here or do something only tangentially related to the area I practice in at the firm. But planning for that doesn't seem like a great idea if it forecloses opportunities that may be very appealing down the road.

As of now, one month into the billable year as a first year associate, my strategy is to try to work with as many people as I can, take on work in every practice area that I can, and talk to friends who are more senior about career planning generally. It has been hard in practice the past two weeks because there is virtually no new transactional work. I am on a pro bono matter, but am really hoping that things pick up soon.

A good fence = great neighbors

I need to build a fence, so to speak.

Reason #951,768 why I hate living in an apartment:

Last night we were giving Timmy a bath when I noticed that my shirt smelled like smoke. Given that I had just changed out of my work clothes and into a clean shirt, folded in my drawer, I thought this was odd. After inspecting the dryer, the kitchen, our bedroom and closet, I discovered the source. Our next door neighbors were on their balcony (which is adjacent to ours) smoking cigarettes. Now we like to keep our windows and doors open (with screens) year round pretty much so we don't have to use A/C. But the smoke was traveling through our vents, all the way to the opposite end of the apartment (to Timmy's room).

We asked them to please stop smoking out there and shut our door. I think they did, but it happens all the time. Is it wrong of me to be annoyed that they would smoke out there? On the one hand, if I were a smoker, I would probably feel entitled to smoke on my own balcony. But on the other hand, it's SOOO invasive of everyone else's lives. Nevermind the fact that I have asthma and a young child, I find the smell of smoke disgusting and I find it a problem if I can't ever open my windows, not to mention enjoy being out on my own balcony. At first, I thought asking them to smoke inside their own apartment might solve the problem, but now I wonder if it would still get through the vents.

I long for the day where the only people in my "air space" are people in my house, where I don't hear parties and screeching cars at all hours of the night, where the building fire alarms don't go off during nap time, and where my morning trek to the car doesn't involve elevators. I love my little community but I could not be more ready to escape apartment living.

Does anyone out there with better manners and/or more patience have advice on how to handle situations with neighbors like this one?

Couldn't stay away forever

Well, today is January 22nd, which makes my last post 53 days ago. Between a sick kid and deals closing at work, December was so busy that I couldn't seem to find time to write anything. Then we traveled back east for Christmas and got stuck in the massive blizzard, extending the stay with my in-laws by three full days. By the time January rolled around, it had been so long that I thought maybe I should just give up. I never know what to write about after a long absence, but I started missing the online interaction. I have been reading along on google reader but it's just not the same. So, even though I have quite frequently been a bad, inconsistent blogger, I am not really ready to give it up completely.

There isn't even really that much to update you on. I'm starting to feel pretty settled in at work, although January hasn't been super busy thus far. Timmy is more fun each day. His vocabulary has (finally) exploded and it is so much easier now that he communicates with us. We call him our little Ferdinand because he is so mellow and likes to play quietly by himself, usually reading books.

We are still stuck in limbo, with PJO working in another county and us staying in the apartment that is quickly becoming much too small for us. I would literally give a limb to have a home office, but we don't want to move until we have a better idea of our job situations. With both of us commuting for over 2 hours a day, we are definitely stretched thin on days where we have a lot of work to do or when Timmy has to stay home from daycare. But I'm hopeful that we'll figure it all out sometime this year.