Hey folks.  Um where the heck did April go?  For reals.  My posting has been soooo sporadic and for a while I couldn’t figure out why.  Then I realized that my Ironman training ramped up this month.  This week, for example, my training is at 14 hours/wk.  I haven’t really figured out how to balance work, puppy, training, blogging, and a social life.  If you think I’ve been neglecting you, I have straight up abandoned a social life.

With all this craziness I’ve been all over the place lately.  I’ve been starting a lot of posts lately…and not finishing them.  Which is the story of my life.  I’m constantly going in twenty directions, and I find it hard to devote my full attention to completing any task.  A while ago, I posted a formspring page…and never finished answering all the questions.

I answered some of the questions (here and here).  But there are still a fair number of them that have yet to be answered (because, honestly, I kinda forgot about it…).  The remaining questions can really be grouped into two categories: running/triathloning and lawyering.  So…in order start cleaning up the stuff I’ve started and not finished, tonight I bring to you the answers to the lawyering questions.

Where did you go to undergrad and law school?

I went to Washington University in St Louis for undergrad, where I got a BA in Political Science and Environmental Science.  But, that was not before beginning as a math major, switching to a physics major, pondering a move to the engineering school, considering switching to the social work school and finally contemplating the ability to get a third major in women’s studies.  I love school.  For reals y’all.  If I could stay in school learning for the rest of my life I would be sooooo happy (academia, anyone?!).

And, I went to Duke for grad school, getting a joint law degree and Masters in Psychology (JD/MA).  I started out just as a law student, but I knew that I was going to enter a joint degree program after my first year.  At first I just didn’t know what the joint degree would be in.  I was leaning towards a joint JD/MEM (Masters of Environmental Management…the program which led me to pick Duke) before law school, but it became clear that as much as I loved environmental work, my real passion was in the intersection of criminal law and psychology.

I love hearing stories about your work, how did you know you wanted to be an attorney? Did you go right to law school after college? Was law school as hard as everyone says it is?

First, off…how did I know I wanted to be an attorney? Um…I think the better question is when did I figure out I didn’t want to be an attorney.  I went to law school straight out of undergrad.  My path veered towards law school for many many reasons, none of which were wanting to be a lawyer.  I think.  I ended up in law school because:

1. What can you do with a poli sci degree?
2. I wanted to save the world/environment/people
3. I liked learning and wanted to stay in school (forever)
4. I had an odd talent for taking the LSAT
5. All my friends were doing it
6. I LOVED Constitutional history and civil rights work
7. I was OBSESSED with the Supreme Court and Supreme Court Politics
8. I wanted to become a Supreme Court Justice
9. I didn’t know what else to do with my life.

Now, I didn’t figure out that I wasn’t interested in being a lawyer until my first year of law school.  By then, I’d sunk enough money (and energy) into law school, it didn’t seem like a choice to leave.  Plus, I had no idea what I really wanted to do (beside “save the world”).  Eventually, I figured out that I wanted to change the way our criminal justice system is run.  I am a huge proponent of rehabilitative programs in prisons and juvenile detention centers.  And, my ideal dream job would be to design and implement rehabilitation programs in juvenile detention centers (or as we call them in GA, “Youth Development Campuses”).  I essentially want to be a prison psychologist.  (My master’s thesis was on Deviancy Training in Juvenile Detention Centers, i.e. how kids come out worse after confinement time…)

This is going to require going back to get my PhD in Clinical Psychology.  When I realized what I really wanted to do with my life in law school, I considered going straight into a PhD program.  Then I thought that it might be helpful if I had a real person job before I turned 30.  So I decided to be a lawyer for a little bit.  But, my estimated return to school is fall of 2012.

You started in Big Law – was your goal to end up in Big Law before/during law school? Or did you always have an interest in PD work?

For the non-lawyer-y people out there, “Big Law” is essentially the term huge firms that do all the corporate work.  Straight out of law school, I was working at one of the largest (size-wise) international firms doing corporate and securities work.  The partners I worked for specialized in venture capital finance.  There are some people who dream about working in these huge firms where you work way too much for lots and lots of money.  It was never my dream to work in a firm like that.  But, I had six-figure law school debt, and working in the public sector didn’t seem to be doable.  So, I took a big law position with the plans of moving on, either into the public sector or back to grad school after a few years.

The economy and managing partners had different plans for me, though.  When I was laid off last year, I had to look at it as an opportunity.  An opportunity to pursue something I care about.  So, I applied to public sector jobs, hoping to nab a public defender job.  The population I work with has a very high incidence rate of mental illness and drug problems, so I encounter daily the issues I want to deal with as a psychologist.  Plus my job is essentially one part lawyer, one part social worker.  The new federal student aid programs for people in public sector jobs has made this awesome job a reality.  (Plus, if I work in the public sector for 10 years, the outstanding balance of my loans at that point are forgiven!)

There was also a question about how America with drug offenses…and I have WAY too much to say to add anything to this post about that.  That will get it’s own post.

Ok, so sorry for the loooooong post.  If you stuck with me, you rock.  If not, then you probs aren’t reading this.  But, for those still here, question: Did this bore the shit out of you?