Interviews

Job interviews are always a difficult balancing act. You have to seem eager but not desperate. Energetic but not frenetic. Friendly but not prying. Intelligent but not know-it-all. Confident but not obnoxious. Relaxed but not unprofessional. All of this while trying to look comfortable in a suit and sensible heels.

Although I have been working in my at-home job for a startup company, I have still been looking for legal work, which has led to a series of job interviews. I have found that being a parent presents a new set of balancing in the job interview process. My resume, which was extremely strong in law school, has a  six-month gap post-graduation. I know that in the current economy, which NPR constantly reminds me is very bleak for lawyers, a post-graduation employment gap is not unheard of, yet I still am painfully aware of the gap when I go in to interviews.

I struggled mentally over whether to bring up my child in the interviews. Having a baby is a perfectly honest and reasonable explanation for why I did not work for six months. In fact, it is a point of pride for me that I took the bar at eight months pregnant, and passed on the first try. I could use this as an opportunity to demonstrate my tenacity, my commitment, and my willingness to compromise personal comfort and sanity in the pursuit of a goal. Being a parent also comes with daily tests of patience, problem-solving abilities, and teamwork.

Legally, I know the interviewer cannot ask me about my parental status. Being a parent should not make a difference in their decision of whether I am a suitable future employee. However, I know that if I bring up the fact that I have a ten-month-old baby at home, it will raise a series of unspoken questions: Will this employee have to leave work to pick up a sick child from daycare? Will her work product struggle if she is up all night with a fussy, teething baby? Will she have to pump at work? Will she have another baby and have to take maternity leave in the foreseeable future? Again, none of these questions should have any effect on the decision that is made, but in the back of my mind I wonder whether it does. For better or for worse, the legal field is still somewhat behind the times and is still not as family-friendly as other professions. If I am compared to another comparable candidate, male or female, who is not a parent, will my status make a difference?

It's a tough question. In the past few weeks, I have had interviews where I mentioned my son, and other interviews where I haven't. In both cases, I left the interview questioning my decision - I was faced with instant regret either way. Either I regretted talking about my son and discussing matters outside of my resume and qualifications, or I regretted not talking about him and missing an opportunity to "explain the gap."

Perhaps the answer is that I am over-thinking the matter. As an interviewee, it is my job to convince the interviewer that I am objectively the best candidate. Period.

Wonder

We recently took the little munchkin on his first trip out of state, to visit his grandparents and great-grandparents. Before we left, my mother called me, concerned that she didn’t have the plethora of toys, books, bouncers, play mats, and other assorted baby-entertainment items that we use on a daily basis. She was worried that while we stayed at her house, the baby would have nothing to play with.

I assured her that this was not a problem. Right now, everything in the world is new and exciting to my baby boy. He is fascinated by bright lights, color contrast, and anything that makes noise. This means that on most days, the lamp in the playroom is more interesting to him than I am. And if there is sun shining in through a window, I have pretty stiff competition for my son’s attention. He is so bright-eyed and alert, taking in colors and shapes and activities in the room that I don’t notice because I have seen them hundreds of times and they have become painfully banal.

This made me think about routine. I definitely consider myself a creature of habit. I love having a predictable daily schedule and planning my weeks in advance. It would take about a month before I grew tired of eating the same thing for lunch every day. Though dull, I generally don’t consider this a bad thing. However, I realized that in my complacent day-to-day routine, I have stopped seeing the wonder in the world. I’m not sure when this happened exactly. Somewhere between the ages of six and twenty-six, I started looking at the world as an adult. I rarely hear a new word, or see a new object, or do a new activity. I look at the same furniture in the same rooms, the same trees and cars outside, the same faces, without actually seeing them. My brain knows what is there, and it skips on to the next thought.

A few years ago, the Washington Post published an article on a social experiment, wherein a world-class violinist played Beethoven on a three million dollar violin in a Metro station in Washington DC. The busy adult commuters hearing the music generally breezed past him, with only a few people stopping briefly to listen. However, most of the children who passed dragged their feet and turned their heads, straining to hear the violin music as their schedule-driven parents tugged them along. The adults hurried past, hearing without hearing the amazing beauty in front of them. I would like to think I would recognize such an amazing talent and performance if I heard it on the street, but more likely I would be one of the adults scurrying along, oblivious.

Thus, it was wonderful to take my baby to my hometown, and watch him experience my home state for the first time. He was too young to understand what he was seeing, but he did know that everything was fresh and exciting and new. This time, I tried to stop and appreciate my home, my parents, my city, my friends, just as my son did. I listened to the music, I tasted the foods, I walked around my old neighborhood, really experiencing each without permitting my task-master brain to rush on to the next obligation or concern. It wasn’t easy.

It’s tough to detach from the day-to-day requirements of adulthood, but every once in a while, it is good to hit pause and look around with fresh eyes and appreciate the wonder.

Making it "official"

When someone asks me what I do for a living, it always makes me pause. Some would say that I am an attorney because I graduated from law school, passed the bar, and have been sworn in to my state bar association. However, I don’t yet feel like an attorney. I do not have a job, have never represented a client, and am still too nervous to even give out unsolicited legal advice. Usually I end up answering the question with an overly-long description of my status as a law school graduate… bar admittee… applying for jobs… bad economy… student loans… and it trails off into nothingness as the asker smiles politely and mentally regrets having asked me the question.

This made me wonder, when will it be “official”? When will I feel confident enough to answer this question without hesitation? Will it be when I pay my first round of bar dues? When I am hired by a law firm or government organization? When I have my name on an office door, or on a business card with a company logo? When I earn my first paycheck? When I first speak on the record? When I submit my first brief? Win my first case?

These questions made me think of my very short-lived teaching career. I was fresh out of college with a degree in Classics, having never taught a day in my life. My junior high school alma mater offered me a teaching position despite my lack of teaching degree and experience. I found myself on the first day of class, 7:30 am, petrified, with dozens of pairs of adolescent sleepy eyes blinking up at me. I had prepared for this class for hours, creating meticulous lesson plans, mentally running over my introduction and the major points of my lecture, and creating handouts for class time and homework. Despite this prep work, I felt completely unprepared and inadequate, certain that my students would see right through me, or would hate me, or (worse) would ignore me.

I suspected that the middle schoolers could smell fear, so I put on my bravest face, took a deep breath, and dove into my memorized introduction monologue. I know I spoke too quickly, that I stumbled over a few of my words, and that I probably said some things that made no sense. However, I survived that first lesson, and by the end of the week, I felt like I was well on my way towards earning the title of “teacher” despite my lack of experience or credentials. The lesson that I learned was “fake it till you make it”, which served me well that first exciting, frustrating and terrifying year of teaching.

I applied this lesson a few months ago when my son was born. The nurses handed me a wiggling, screaming, messy bundle and congratulated me on becoming a mother. At that moment I felt overwhelmed and exhausted and nothing like a mother, but I smiled and thanked them and introduced myself to this new foreign creature. I figured I should act like a mom, and the truth would soon follow, as it did with the teaching job. After the first few uncomfortable weeks, filled with frustration, poop, crying and constant checking-for-breathing, I finally felt confident saying that I was a mom.

So maybe the answer to my “attorney” quandary is that I need to fake it until I make it. If I represent myself as an attorney, maybe volunteer or do pro bono work, and continue to seek full-time employment, then the truth will follow and I will become the attorney I am pretending to be. Fingers crossed.