Wednesday, July 28, 2010

What I Probably Won't Be Doing Next Summer

It's time to stop worrying about getting good grades and start worrying about getting a job. Application season for judicial clerkships starts in September. I am very enthusiastic about the idea of clerking for a judge, but those jobs don't come easily. Clerking for a federal judge is right out--I'll apply, but those are prestigious jobs that attract out-of-state candidates with much better academic credentials than I have. That leaves state judges. According to the information distributed by the career services office, exactly one state judge in central Arkansas is planning to hire a clerk next summer.
The upshot is that I plan to spend a goodly chunk of my August putting together application materials for jobs I will never get. I am trying to gird myself for ten months of similar windmill-tilting. Looking for work in a bad economy requires a healthy appetite for rejection.