Resumé

Two weeks ago, I had my first interview for a position with the state attorney general’s office, which would begin in August, at the end of my clerkship. The man who interviewed me said that he’d send my file on to the director, who would decide whether there would be a second interview, and that if I hadn’t heard anything in two weeks, I should call him again. Yesterday was two weeks, so I called the interviewer again this morning. He told me that he’d recently sent my file up to the director but that the director has sort of a full plate right now, and that I should check back in another week or two.

He also said something that made me nervous. Now, there are two offices, one in Newark and one in Trenton. When, during the interview, he asked if I’d prefer any particular office, I said that I’d want to be considered only for the Newark office. (I sure as hell don’t want to move back down to central New Jersey and/or commute to and from Trenton every day.) During our phone conversation today, he told me that positions in Newark are actually kind of slim right now.

I do not, do not, do not want to work in Trenton. I have already decided that, damn the torpedoes, I’m going to move to Manhattan, and Trenton is an hour and 20 minutes by train from New York’s Penn Station. That’s in addition to getting to and from each train station. That commute really does not seem feasible to me.

So this is the point where I should start making contingency plans and look for a different job. One in New York or thereabouts. But I’m stumped. Nothing seems appealing: working for a law firm, working for a litigation consulting firm. It’s probably too late to get another clerkship elsewhere for the fall (though it wouldn’t hurt to try). I can say accurately that looking for a job is my least favorite thing to do in the world. I usually do it grudgingly, half-assed if at all, and with little or no motivation. This has usually worked to my detriment.

1990: Sixteen years old, the summer before my senior year of high school. Back in the States for the summer. The first summer that I didn’t go to camp or go away on some camp-sponsored program. But I didn’t have a job. I spent two and a half months lazing around my aunt and uncle’s house, with no friends in town, reading books and newspapers and going for aimless walks. I thought I was going to go insane.

1991: This was okay. My first job ever, I worked at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, doing data entry. Mind-numbing, but the embassy had a great library where I used to spend my lunch breaks.

1992: The summer after my first year of college. Came home from college with no summer plans. I had a job offer to work as a counselor at a sleep-away camp, but I didn’t want to spend my summer imprisoned at a camp, so I wound up working the cash register and the telephone at a small Japanese restaurant.

1993: Stayed at UVA in Charlottesville so I could take a biology lab course, which I needed for my pre-med requirements. Had a part-time job, my most embarrassing job ever, an experience I never acknowledge and usually try to repress. I worked as a fast-food cashier.

1994: (a) While other people seemed to have lined up impressive and enriching summer opportunities for their resumés, I ended the school year with no idea what to do. I wound up staying in Charlottesville again, where I wound up working for UVA’s catering service and also had two weeks of temp jobs. UVA Catering was actually kind of fun. Free meals, fancy parties, I could relate to the other employees (who were students like me), and I got to see parts of UVA I hadn’t seen before.

(b) The following fall I got a part-time job at one of the UVA libraries, shelving books. Mind-numbing, my brain had nothing to do but worry about my life. But the library stacks were peaceful. My boss, the stacks supervisor, had a Ph.D. in British history.

1995: (a) I graduated college with no idea what I was going to do. I spent the summer back at my parents’ house in New Jersey. Took a road trip to visit a friend in Colorado. Came back, spent several weeks in limbo. Made ten different plans and cancelled them all. Wound up working for a month at a data-entry temp job, this time in Chelsea (yet I never explored the area — what a wasted opportunity!). Actually, I quit after three weeks because the numbing mindless repetition made my brain focus on problems, and it was driving me insane.

(b) After a couple of weeks I decided I was going to move back to Charlottesville and find something to do there. I wound up finding yet another temp job, yet again doing data entry, this time at the UVA Health Sciences Center. Checking the ID numbers on patients’ medical records so they’d be properly filed. Inertia set in and the job stretched into five months. I couldn’t relate to any of my coworkers, and I was ashamed and aimless and again thought I was going to go nuts.

1996: A position opened up at the UVA Music Library in February 1996, and I was hired. It was a terrific environment, great people. The Music Department had been my second home at UVA. But the work wasn’t challenging, I wasn’t using my brain at all, and I spent much time on the Web. (Some things haven’t changed!)

I had applied to UVA Law, and I got in. I felt my life had a sense of direction again. I felt good about myself again. I felt like I was going to be productive once more.

1997: The summer after my first year of law school. I worked as an intern for a federal judge here in Newark, along with four other law students. It was without pay so I lived at home. The other students worked there only 3-4 days a week and had paying jobs (painting, library work) the rest of the week. Not me. I decided to work there 5 days a week. Didn’t feel like working in a retail-type job again.

1998: The summer after my second year of law school. While everyone else had been hired by a law firm for the summer, I hadn’t. I probably hadn’t made enough of an effort. I had interviews, but no firms called me back for a second interview. At the last minute I wound up getting a job as a research assistant for a UVA Law professor, which is typically a first-year summer job. The work was pretty boring and, well, my boss — I didn’t get along with her very well. And because I was largely unsupervised, I spent much time — you guessed it — on the Web. But it was great to be spending another summer in Charlottesville. C’ville in the summer is gloriously lazy and laid-back.

1999: The summer after my final year of law school. While everyone else had been hired for full-time positions after employment the previous summer, or was going to be entering a clerkship in the fall, I hadn’t secured a job for myself. But like everyone else, I spent that summer studying for the bar — in my case, New York (which I passed, yay!). At the beginning of August I went home to my parents’ house, tried to find a job. (Around that time I came out to my parents again, once and for all, which made things doubly rough.)

I managed to get hired part-time by a family friend for her Internet publishing company, down in bucolic central New Jersey, as a writer/editor. Four employees — myself, and three refreshingly liberal women who were into yoga and healthy eating. The office was in a Victorian house. But the work got old, and I often found myself — can we say it again? — surfing the Web.

That November I actually got a job offer from a very small suburban New Jersey firm, but the environment was sterile and I dreaded the idea of working there. It just wasn’t me. So I turned down that job and wound up moving to central New Jersey and increasing my hours at the Internet publishing job, though it still wasn’t full time. To supplement my income, I got a part-time job at Barnes & Noble. A guy with a law degree, working at Barnes & Noble.

2000: Out of the blue, last spring, this clerkship came up. The previous August, I’d sent my resumé to the New Jersey judiciary, and nine months later it had somehow found its way to this place. I interviewed, I got hired, and I moved back up here. For the first couple of months I worked diligently. But now, at work, I spend so much of my time — come on, you know! — surfing the Web! And writing blog entries!

So there’s my job history for you. Last-ditch acts of desperation, unsatisfying positions, false starts and stops. I’m not too enthusiastic about the possibilities for the immediate future. If this position in the Newark office of the AG doesn’t pan out, I don’t know what I’ll be doing come August.

In the past ten years, I have at different times wanted to become a doctor, a psychotherapist, a history professor, a journalist, a writer, a lawyer, a teacher. I have found problems with all of those ideas. I don’t know. I have no idea where my life is taking me. I’m so fickle, so easily distracted. I’m enthusiastic about things they don’t make jobs for. There has to be some sort of satisfying career out there for me. Probably something that I haven’t even thought of yet. I mean, look at some of you — gallery owner? HIV prevention counselor? Those types of things don’t show up on career tests.