JB’s Blog

At the risk of sounding obsessed with weather (I swear I’m really not), I’ve noticed that the best weathermen are the guys that sell umbrellas outside the subways stations in NYC. 

Take, for example, the other week when I was in the city for some interviews.  It was perfectly sunny out…a beautiful day.  I had five hours to kill between interviews and so I sat out in the park and read and wandered around downtown NYC.  I went into the Financial History Museum, which was a 10X10 room with two exhibits.  I read every single plaque so that I could kill some more time and feel my admission price was worth it.  Then I went to walk along Wall Street and noticed there were guys selling umbrellas outside the subways.  I looked up, and the sun was shining and the weather looked great.  I laughed, thinking that these guys were wasting their time today.

I go inside for my second interview a couple hours later and as I am in the waiting room, I look out the window and notice it has suddenly gotten quite dark.  Then comes the rain.  I leave my interview and run toward the subway at full speed…umbrellaless.

So here’s my lesson for all of you.  If you see the umbrella sellers outside of the subway stop…make sure you have a f#@!ing  umbrella

I had to share my latest fortune from a fortune cookie. 

"Your observations are useful to others."

Glad to be of use.

So I was gone for a whole month.  I’m sure you all have somehow managed to deal.  I was studying and then taking the CT and NY bar examinations.  Now I have to just sit back and wait until the results come (end of Sept. for CT and end of Nov. for NY). 

I have moved back home temporarily as I search for a real lawyer job, as much fun as the unpaid internships have been and all. 

So that brings me to today’s topic…the unpaid internship.  Is it just me, or did these things not exist back when our parents were going to school.  Someone somewhere realized that students would be dumb enough to work for free if you told them "it’ll look good on the ol’ resume."  The college/high school internships are the biggest jokes.  Let’s face it, if you were really going to be honest, the description would look something like this

XYZ Corp., Intern.
Refilled the water jug everyday.  Properly mixed cream and the perfect amount of sugar in coffee.  Responded to retarded letters from people with too much time on their hands - letters so unimportant that it was a toss up if a chimp or me would respond to them.  Successfully picked up a phone and said hello.  Impressively made the copy machine get into a paper jam every day, and then fixed said paper jam.  Wrote Memoranda.  Wrote my own recommendation letter.

Unfortunately these things have caught on and it is extremely hard to get a paying gig as a student these days.  With rising education costs, and students having to take out loans (such as myself) to cover the cost, the internship is brutal.