These past few days, I have taken to sorting through all of my garbage and cleaned out most of my law school papers.
Admittedly, I'm a bit of a pack rat, but I felt a particular need to keep the wonderful lecture notes, note cards, supplements, and even unsold textbooks because I had bought into a crazy concept that all of these notes would be useful in my future law practice. After all, juicy tidbits of law that were previously chewed, semi-digested, and regurgitated by great legal minds for the nourishment of younglings in the nest sounded like a goldmine.
It especially sounded good whenever professors would encourage us to call them with questions during our subsequent law practices about the actual law. It sounded better than any court on this land. They got a ruling from Professor Schmidt on non-conforming use, which is like waving a cross at a vampire on the opposing side.
Well...
The funny thing about calling up professors with questions to basic legal concepts after you've passed the bar is that it demonstrates the worthlessness of law school if they can't even spend more than a semester teaching you how to research, or that more than a few non-gifted people slip through the net who are either too lazy or just don't have the ability to spot a basic issue (or just don't have access to a thesaurus if their favored search terms aren't working). If you don't know how to schmooze with a judge or make your filings conform with the local rules, you obviously need the help of another attorney since it is all the unwritten social context that nobody wants to really admit exists. If you're 3 years out of Property I, and still need to call Professor Dumbledore because you still can't figure out Google enough to explain a basic legal concept....
Wow.
"So, there is like this thing where some guy didn't mean to cause an accident, but he wasn't paying attention to the road because he was reading a magazine and drinking a beer while he was driving, and he forced my client off the road and into a ditch. Can you help me out? I tried searching Westlaw for terms like 'all over the road,' 'ditch,' and 'magazine' but I just can't find any case law that explains to me if my client has a good case. I don't think the courts have tackled this issue yet, so this one might be turned into a movie like Amistad."
The funny thing about calling the professor is that sometimes it could backfire. You never know if the professor you are seeking to talk to is actually the expert witness for the other side.
So, I cursorily looked at my notes. Not only can I not tell you what I had written anywhere (which would make my search that much more difficult than just typing the phrase in Google), I realized that cobbled bits of law from God knows where do not make the current law in my state. They might make a general concept, sort of like how high school teaches you "standardized" German and Spanish, but it's nothing I can cite to any court.
Yes, see My Stack of Old Torts Lectures on Contributory Negligence that I condensed into flashcards, Fall 2006.
Besides, after taking BarBri, I began to realize that law school made the law much more difficult than what it is. I guess they had to do something to explain why we were in law school for 3 years instead of 6 weeks.
When you look at what law school accomplishes, why not make it a 6 week program? All the core curriculum of law school does is teach towards the bar anyway. Sometimes, the school is successful in brainwashing the students into believing that this method is in their best interest and they shouldn't burn any of those precious 90 hours taking clinic and instead use that time to take a random class that will consist of a grand total of 1/2 of an essay on the bar exam. You may not know how to go to court and are hobbled out of the starting gate, but you really overkilled that Secured Transactions question that an examiner spent 30 second reading.
I can fault many programs for taking the approach of making the coursework "cost effective" to the point of being useless by using outdated equipment and methods that aren't actually helpful in the working world. However, law school is so much more expensive and the practice of law carry many more demands on the employees
I'm sure that about 1/4 of my notes have question marks written beside them. In my first year, the question mark was a result of a genuine "WTF?" because the way they teach law, it is sort of like bringing an elephant into a darkened room and you having to guess that it's an elephant from touching its tail. In my second and third years, the question marks appear in the margins because my mind wandered and I snapped back into focus somewhere around prong 3 of a 4 prong set.
The good old days of memorizing "three prong tests." It's funny that I had to learn that stuff when judges were constantly misapplying the standards even with a book open in front of them.
Anyway...
Tons of paper is in the recycling bin. In a few short months, somebody will be wearing a paper hat made from my old law notes. There will be a smile upon the face of an innocent child as he plays with his origami giraffe made with UCC notes. I had a brief spike in hope that companies were still making toilet paper made from recycled paper like they did years ago, but that brief hiccup of caring for The Last Rain Forest has passed quietly away in the dead of night somewhere around 1994. Damn. No more biodegradable trash bags or paper towels made of recycled paper and their brown, course texture wiping away pizza sauce that you spilled on the counter. Back in the day, it could have been possible that somebody was going to literally wipe their bottom with "last shot doctrine" lecture notes. Yes, that was their last shot at being useful for anything.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Sallie Mae, I Can't Wait Until You are in my Rear View Mirror
I'm a person who has been fairly successful at paying my bills over the years. Maybe I've forgotten to pay my phone bill once or twice, but I've never had problems with a system where I was actually trying to pay my bills.
I have not consolidated my loans, and I was in that weird transition period where some of my loans are still with Sallie Mae and some are with Direct Loan. In just the past few months, I've had a false belief that I had hit the "confirm" button on my payment. The button was buried at the bottom of the screen, so I forgot that even though I told them to pay a certain amount, that I still had to confirm that I wanted to pay that amount.
This problem got me into the habit of paying early enough so that I could revisit the website in a few days to see if I could catch problems before they turned into issues.
This system is paying off....slightly.
Earlier this month, I had typed in the dollar amount to pay. I looked on my bank account, noticed that it had actually posted, but went back to see if the payment actually took.
For some reason, both my Stafford and Plus loan on that one website were a few dollars short! According to them, I still owed about $17 for the month. I felt that was weird, but I compared what went through the bank to confirm that they didn't take out the full amount, but lost $17 in the process. Seeing that the dollar amounts matched, I went back, added in the extra money, and then went back and made sure that the dollar amounts actually read zero. I'm not sure what happened, but since it's a computer, it's hard for me to argue that I typed in the right dollar amount, even if it is fishy that the payments I made for both loans were just a few dollars too low.
As I feel the annoyance, all I can think is that I'm looking years into the future and having these problems haunt my every step. All I'm doing is very base line activities. I can't imagine what a mess it is for people who fall behind. Seriously, people, you can't even effectively tell your computer how to remove the set amount of money that I owe from my bank! All I need are these jokers trying to ruin my credit.
I can't wait until I become employed. I'm going to live in a tent and eat bread and beans until I get rid of you people.
I have not consolidated my loans, and I was in that weird transition period where some of my loans are still with Sallie Mae and some are with Direct Loan. In just the past few months, I've had a false belief that I had hit the "confirm" button on my payment. The button was buried at the bottom of the screen, so I forgot that even though I told them to pay a certain amount, that I still had to confirm that I wanted to pay that amount.
This problem got me into the habit of paying early enough so that I could revisit the website in a few days to see if I could catch problems before they turned into issues.
This system is paying off....slightly.
Earlier this month, I had typed in the dollar amount to pay. I looked on my bank account, noticed that it had actually posted, but went back to see if the payment actually took.
For some reason, both my Stafford and Plus loan on that one website were a few dollars short! According to them, I still owed about $17 for the month. I felt that was weird, but I compared what went through the bank to confirm that they didn't take out the full amount, but lost $17 in the process. Seeing that the dollar amounts matched, I went back, added in the extra money, and then went back and made sure that the dollar amounts actually read zero. I'm not sure what happened, but since it's a computer, it's hard for me to argue that I typed in the right dollar amount, even if it is fishy that the payments I made for both loans were just a few dollars too low.
As I feel the annoyance, all I can think is that I'm looking years into the future and having these problems haunt my every step. All I'm doing is very base line activities. I can't imagine what a mess it is for people who fall behind. Seriously, people, you can't even effectively tell your computer how to remove the set amount of money that I owe from my bank! All I need are these jokers trying to ruin my credit.
I can't wait until I become employed. I'm going to live in a tent and eat bread and beans until I get rid of you people.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Work Smarter; Not Harder
I caught this gem of a story that covers the fact that the United States is slipping in the world rankings for churning out college graduates:
We are now ranked 12th in the world for creating college graduates.
Yes, in spite of the rise of for-profit schools, it appears that people aren't bothering to finish their degrees!
The math of this article is fairly simple: College Degree = Success.
And, as usual, southerners are blamed for dragging down this great nation.
Quote:
Hmm. Maybe we should be giving them a medal for doing their part in not contributing to the number of people filing for bankruptcy. If you're in Arkansas, and your job options include being a pig farmer and running the General Store, I don't think that racking up $30,000 in student loans is going to help your situation that much.
People in large metropolitan areas are used to having a wide variety of careers to choose from. Chances are, you can do something with that Economics and Advertising degree. In many areas that are relatively sparsely populated, the food chain looks like this: Doctor, Lawyer, Business Owner, Health Care Professional, Realtor, Cop, Home Construction/Repair, Low-Level Bureaucrat, Car Sales, Auto Repair, Retail Worker, Bus Boy.
Yes, identify which of these lines of work needs a college degree to successfully complete the job. Either you completely bite the bullet and give nearly 10 years of your life to rotting in college and graduate school, or you take a couple of semesters at the community college before the light bulb pops on that Intro to British Literature has nothing to do with selling houses or taking drivers license photos at the DMV.
You can't really blame some 18 year old Arkansan who was the first in their family to proudly go off to college to suddenly give up when they see that it is a road to nowhere. Not only are they already leery of the amount of debt they will have to take on thanks to skyrocketing tuition, they have seen for themselves that their older friends who have already graduated are moving back home and have resumed their former jobs at the local Sonic. Other than a few degree fields like nursing, there is very little opportunity that makes relocation a viable option.
If there were recruiting fairs or stories about how their friends had jobs lined up from the beginning of their senior year, there would see a lot more interest from the students in actually finishing their degrees. Instead, they get a year or two in their studies, figure out that they aren't Rhodes Scholar material, know that the job banks are nearly empty, and realize the remaining two years of their degree is a waste. In some ways, they end up being more marketable by simply giving up on their degree rather than being branded as a graduate who will probably try to leave the minute a "good" job opens up.
It is also not surprising that students would quit going to college since many of the jobs that created the economic base that funded their schooling have moved out of the country. If mom and dad's job at the sock factory is now in China, and the rules require that parents become partially responsible for repaying many of the loans that their children are taking out, it is fairly likely that there have been many serious talks where mom and dad have had to break the news to their children that they can no longer afford to pay to send them to college.
So where is the incentive to actually finish?
Unfortunately, it is too expensive for the average person to be educated just for education's sake. When the expense of an education can't be parlayed into an economic benefit, it simply becomes a luxury that many people can't afford. We can't simply make it a goal to have a better-educated society simply for its own sake if we are going to turn around and crush the students who step up to the plate with ungodly debt and no prospects for paying their bills.
We are now ranked 12th in the world for creating college graduates.
Yes, in spite of the rise of for-profit schools, it appears that people aren't bothering to finish their degrees!
The math of this article is fairly simple: College Degree = Success.
And, as usual, southerners are blamed for dragging down this great nation.
Quote:
Nowhere is that trend more apparent than in Arkansas, a state of deeply entrenched poverty, where just over 40 percent of students finish college with bachelor’s degrees in six years or less. Arkansas is one of several southern states that have seen college enrollment rates increase, even as college completion rates remain stubbornly low. The contradiction has frustrated education officials and prompted calls for action at the highest levels of state government.
Hmm. Maybe we should be giving them a medal for doing their part in not contributing to the number of people filing for bankruptcy. If you're in Arkansas, and your job options include being a pig farmer and running the General Store, I don't think that racking up $30,000 in student loans is going to help your situation that much.
People in large metropolitan areas are used to having a wide variety of careers to choose from. Chances are, you can do something with that Economics and Advertising degree. In many areas that are relatively sparsely populated, the food chain looks like this: Doctor, Lawyer, Business Owner, Health Care Professional, Realtor, Cop, Home Construction/Repair, Low-Level Bureaucrat, Car Sales, Auto Repair, Retail Worker, Bus Boy.
Yes, identify which of these lines of work needs a college degree to successfully complete the job. Either you completely bite the bullet and give nearly 10 years of your life to rotting in college and graduate school, or you take a couple of semesters at the community college before the light bulb pops on that Intro to British Literature has nothing to do with selling houses or taking drivers license photos at the DMV.
You can't really blame some 18 year old Arkansan who was the first in their family to proudly go off to college to suddenly give up when they see that it is a road to nowhere. Not only are they already leery of the amount of debt they will have to take on thanks to skyrocketing tuition, they have seen for themselves that their older friends who have already graduated are moving back home and have resumed their former jobs at the local Sonic. Other than a few degree fields like nursing, there is very little opportunity that makes relocation a viable option.
If there were recruiting fairs or stories about how their friends had jobs lined up from the beginning of their senior year, there would see a lot more interest from the students in actually finishing their degrees. Instead, they get a year or two in their studies, figure out that they aren't Rhodes Scholar material, know that the job banks are nearly empty, and realize the remaining two years of their degree is a waste. In some ways, they end up being more marketable by simply giving up on their degree rather than being branded as a graduate who will probably try to leave the minute a "good" job opens up.
It is also not surprising that students would quit going to college since many of the jobs that created the economic base that funded their schooling have moved out of the country. If mom and dad's job at the sock factory is now in China, and the rules require that parents become partially responsible for repaying many of the loans that their children are taking out, it is fairly likely that there have been many serious talks where mom and dad have had to break the news to their children that they can no longer afford to pay to send them to college.
So where is the incentive to actually finish?
Unfortunately, it is too expensive for the average person to be educated just for education's sake. When the expense of an education can't be parlayed into an economic benefit, it simply becomes a luxury that many people can't afford. We can't simply make it a goal to have a better-educated society simply for its own sake if we are going to turn around and crush the students who step up to the plate with ungodly debt and no prospects for paying their bills.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Don't Let the Salaries Fool You
The other day, I read a very entertaining article which suggested that we do away with the bar exam.
Everybody has their opinion on the bar. I waffle too much to even address if we should have a bar exam, so that will be left for another day.
I'm going to address a side point that the author raised about attorney salaries.
Quote:
I clicked on the bio of this writer. Surprise, surprise, they are in academia! And instead of using personal anecdotes, or even questioning why this urban legend of thousands of unemployed attorneys exists, they reach for NALP numbers.
The professor/blogger says this bon mot in another blog entry:
According to this professor/blogger's theory, absolutely nobody should have been an unemployed attorney working the perfume counter at Macy's. Third year law students should have not had to even think about finding a job once they graduated. They should have their pick of desperate employers long before they were measured for their tams. They should have been begged to start work early by those who are swamped with work. Even if BIGLAW was making a few cuts, it doesn't mean that there aren't severely understaffed areas like small firms or public interest groups who have had to turn away cases because they just don't have the labor resources to take them.
I thought an actual clue that there are many unemployed attorneys would be hearing that there were well over 100 applicants for the same low-paying jobs that I had been applying for, but apparently not. Those numbers can be apparently explained away by assuming that there are over 100+ attorneys out there who are unhappy with their current employment and who have decided to lateral over into something that pays less than $40,000 per year.
But let's not stop there: Let's define non-saturation. If the professor wishes to talk about salaries, then we should also speak of what is missing in the compensation packages. If the legal profession were not overly saturated, a good majority of employees would get compensation packages that includes:
Signing bonuses
Paid moving expenses
Company housing
Paid vacations
Health insurance
Offers to pay for travel expenses for interviews
Week-long wooing sessions where they take you (the POTENTIAL employee, not the ACTUAL employee) and your spouse out to 4 star restaurants and Broadway productions
Retirement plans
Reimbursement on your student loans
AND
The biggest sign of non-saturation?
THE ABILITY TO NEGOTIATE YOUR SALARY.
I don't think anybody who has been on a job hunt recently can claim that they were engaged in skillful negotiations to get a great salary. All I've heard about is people who were in a take-it-or-leave-it position who chose to walk away. To me, that doesn't sound like a desperate employer who absolutely can't anybody for the job. It sounds more like an employer who has a large stack of resumes on their desk from people who were just as competent as the person they were offering the job.
Everybody has their opinion on the bar. I waffle too much to even address if we should have a bar exam, so that will be left for another day.
I'm going to address a side point that the author raised about attorney salaries.
Quote:
More importantly, I think that the high salaries of lawyers combined with the high cost of even very basic legal services show that we have too few lawyers rather than too many, and that the best way to determine the “right” number of lawyers is through market competition, not government mandate.
I clicked on the bio of this writer. Surprise, surprise, they are in academia! And instead of using personal anecdotes, or even questioning why this urban legend of thousands of unemployed attorneys exists, they reach for NALP numbers.
The professor/blogger says this bon mot in another blog entry:
I should note that the NALP and Labor Department data do not account for lawyers who are unemployed. Unfortunately, neither these sources nor others I have looked at have shown anything approaching a good estimate of the unemployment rate among lawyers. However, it seems unlikely that there is large Marxian “reserve army” of unemployed lawyers out there. If there were, one would expect lawyer salaries to drop substantially as competition from the unemployed drives down the pay of those who have jobs, especially at the lower ends of the distribution (e.g. — the 10th and 25th percentiles noted in the post).
According to this professor/blogger's theory, absolutely nobody should have been an unemployed attorney working the perfume counter at Macy's. Third year law students should have not had to even think about finding a job once they graduated. They should have their pick of desperate employers long before they were measured for their tams. They should have been begged to start work early by those who are swamped with work. Even if BIGLAW was making a few cuts, it doesn't mean that there aren't severely understaffed areas like small firms or public interest groups who have had to turn away cases because they just don't have the labor resources to take them.
I thought an actual clue that there are many unemployed attorneys would be hearing that there were well over 100 applicants for the same low-paying jobs that I had been applying for, but apparently not. Those numbers can be apparently explained away by assuming that there are over 100+ attorneys out there who are unhappy with their current employment and who have decided to lateral over into something that pays less than $40,000 per year.
But let's not stop there: Let's define non-saturation. If the professor wishes to talk about salaries, then we should also speak of what is missing in the compensation packages. If the legal profession were not overly saturated, a good majority of employees would get compensation packages that includes:
Signing bonuses
Paid moving expenses
Company housing
Paid vacations
Health insurance
Offers to pay for travel expenses for interviews
Week-long wooing sessions where they take you (the POTENTIAL employee, not the ACTUAL employee) and your spouse out to 4 star restaurants and Broadway productions
Retirement plans
Reimbursement on your student loans
AND
The biggest sign of non-saturation?
THE ABILITY TO NEGOTIATE YOUR SALARY.
I don't think anybody who has been on a job hunt recently can claim that they were engaged in skillful negotiations to get a great salary. All I've heard about is people who were in a take-it-or-leave-it position who chose to walk away. To me, that doesn't sound like a desperate employer who absolutely can't anybody for the job. It sounds more like an employer who has a large stack of resumes on their desk from people who were just as competent as the person they were offering the job.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
It's Too Soon.
Sometimes, I link articles that seem relevant to the unemployed-attorney plight. Today, truth is stranger than fiction, so I included a link to a job-hunting article on "The Onion."
It's not quite as funny as that sitcom "Outsourced," but a chortle in itself.
And speaking of "Outsourced", does anybody find this premise funny?
Do the networks view this as the same kind of funny-haha that people experience when watching home videos of some guy getting racked in the nuts by a 2X4?
Is this supposed to be like "Hogan's Heroes" where the audience at home finds comic relief in watching prisoners of war trying to escape the Germans?
I'm sure that John McCain enjoys his box set with a few tall ones on those nights he can't quite go to sleep.
While watching somebody get racked in the nuts is funny, we know that the pain is temporary and the guy will be up and walking again tomorrow. There isn't a Detroit-sort of outcome where the guy is going to go on unemployment, develop a drinking problem, and then wind up in prison after assaulting the neighbor.
Somebody will point out that I haven't "seen" the show. That's true. But it sounds vaguely racist in that many of its chortles come from watching the Indians try to learn American culture. Maybe they see it is a modern "Perfect Strangers" where they figure Americans are resentful enough in this climate that we'll have a bit of joy poking fun at the new equivalents of Russian yokels. Still, it's still a bit like making a sitcom about 9/11 or mortgage foreclosures.
"Coming this fall on NBC, a new comedy called 'Life Savings.' Watch as the residents of Barstow engage in humorous antics to delay the repo man for yet another week as Dave Johns, who was laid off 16 months ago after the State went bankrupt, tries to get his cupcake mobile business off the ground."
It's not quite as funny as that sitcom "Outsourced," but a chortle in itself.
And speaking of "Outsourced", does anybody find this premise funny?
Do the networks view this as the same kind of funny-haha that people experience when watching home videos of some guy getting racked in the nuts by a 2X4?
Is this supposed to be like "Hogan's Heroes" where the audience at home finds comic relief in watching prisoners of war trying to escape the Germans?
I'm sure that John McCain enjoys his box set with a few tall ones on those nights he can't quite go to sleep.
While watching somebody get racked in the nuts is funny, we know that the pain is temporary and the guy will be up and walking again tomorrow. There isn't a Detroit-sort of outcome where the guy is going to go on unemployment, develop a drinking problem, and then wind up in prison after assaulting the neighbor.
Somebody will point out that I haven't "seen" the show. That's true. But it sounds vaguely racist in that many of its chortles come from watching the Indians try to learn American culture. Maybe they see it is a modern "Perfect Strangers" where they figure Americans are resentful enough in this climate that we'll have a bit of joy poking fun at the new equivalents of Russian yokels. Still, it's still a bit like making a sitcom about 9/11 or mortgage foreclosures.
"Coming this fall on NBC, a new comedy called 'Life Savings.' Watch as the residents of Barstow engage in humorous antics to delay the repo man for yet another week as Dave Johns, who was laid off 16 months ago after the State went bankrupt, tries to get his cupcake mobile business off the ground."
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Fun Reading for 0L's: What, Exactly, is a Personal Injury Mill?
Dear 0L:
I know you are currently investigating which kind of law you would "like to go into" once you graduate from law school.
If you go to a lower-tier school and don't end up in the top 5% and law journal, your best bet at employment is a mill.
And there are many kinds of mills. There aren't just the personal injury mills who run their ads on television during Jerry Springer. You also have divorce mills and real property mills (they will search title and sell you title insurance).
What they all have in common: Phone numbers you can spell out (1-800-AMPUTEE), television advertisements during Judge Judy, and a staff filled with new graduates who are being worked 10-12 hour days for little pay.
Read more about mill structures here if you think you still think you will be able to "practice law" when you graduate.
I know you are currently investigating which kind of law you would "like to go into" once you graduate from law school.
If you go to a lower-tier school and don't end up in the top 5% and law journal, your best bet at employment is a mill.
And there are many kinds of mills. There aren't just the personal injury mills who run their ads on television during Jerry Springer. You also have divorce mills and real property mills (they will search title and sell you title insurance).
What they all have in common: Phone numbers you can spell out (1-800-AMPUTEE), television advertisements during Judge Judy, and a staff filled with new graduates who are being worked 10-12 hour days for little pay.
Read more about mill structures here if you think you still think you will be able to "practice law" when you graduate.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
If Medical Schools Didn't Have to Find Residencies for Their Students, it Would Resemble the Legal Profession
Upon graduation, the medical student and newly christened Dr. Don, one in a class of 300 students, ranked 47% of his class, was one of 80% of his class without a job and saddled with $250,000 in debt. He began to wonder how he would repay his loans because the search for a residency was not going well.
After initially believing that he was one of "the chosen ones" (or one of the "lucky bastards") for getting into medical school, his search for a residency was quickly sucking the life out of him. He sent his resumes to OCI, but nobody offered to even interview him. Career services had spammed his inbox every semester and assured everybody that even somebody in the 99% once got a job interview so nobody should "worry" because they will all find jobs eventually. However, at graduation, only 8 members of his class had landed residencies with "prestigious" medical facilities. Another 23 landed something at the free clinic. Another 27 were still planning to work at their old internships and hoped that the newest batch of resumes that they were mailing out would land them "something." Another 15 had taken various positions such as food sample presenter at the grocery store and perfume counter assistant at Macy's. Another 19 were going to get their business degree.
Months later, his bills becoming due, one deferment down, and the latest batch of 230 resumes being ignored, Dr. Don decided to create his own residency.
It's what people told him to do. Why, he was now a doctor who had graduated from medical school. Plus, it was his own fault that he couldn't find a residency. He should have "tried harder" while in medical school to get into the top 10% of his class. Besides that, he should have "tried harder" to get a residency. It isn't enough that he sent out 300 or even 500 or 1,000 resumes and chased down every last residency position in a mall in the bad part of town in the middle of Butt Feck Idaho. (Actually, he let that one go and didn't apply for it because it was clear across the country. Now, he wonders if he's completely missed his one opportunity to ever have a residency). He needed to call and harass these employers to see if they got his resume, otherwise they wouldn't know that he really wanted this job and he wasn't just simply spamming them. He needed to redo the margins on his resume and properly space the dates because the employers would automatically throw it in the garbage can if they figured out that he wasn't insanely dedicated to detail. He needed to qualify his "interests" section and specify where he liked to travel because its not enough just to say that he liked to travel. He needed to write the name of his medical school organizations on his resume in bold and italics, otherwise, the employer who was absentmindedly scanning his resume for the exactly two seconds they dedicate to each individual resume might miss that he was "involved" while in school and was simply a loser who went home and took a nap after class. He needed better "Thank You" notes, otherwise, they will think he is insincere about wanting the job. He needed to fold his hands in a particular way during the interview because if he gestured too much, he would look a bit threatening and maybe like he didn't even want the job. He needed to go to more medical conferences and meet other practicing doctors because nobody likes to hire people who they've never met. He needed to show up at happy hour with the local medical association because he needed to pass out business cards like candy. He needed to shine his shoes because dirty shoes suggest disorganization and inability to take his image as a successful attorney seriously.
This guy was a complete failure because he only did about half of it.
Where he went to school and the sheer lack of residency positions had nothing to do with his unemployment. He was just a creep. A loser. What in the hell is he doing here? He doesn't belong here. And if he can't dedicate every breathing second to making himself the perfect candidate in the way that Nicole Kidman should have tried harder to be a Stepford Wife (for even if she was a Stepford Wife, she obviously still wasn't Stepford-y enough). If it means slapping on a little rouge and pretending like he watches Boston Red Sox games, it didn't hurt a damn thing because he would be a complete moron if he didn't do it. This is a competition, my friends. Perfect resume margins said everything that the employer needed to know about Dr. Don's ability to diagnose cancer. If he didn't correct those margins, the employer would take notice and draw an immediate conclusion that Dr. Don was just the kind of guy that missed those subtle symptoms that House would catch.
He also wasn't applying for nursing positions. Or jobs for orderlies, medical billing, or lab technicians. He was told by the nay sayers, "Hey, you have a medical degree, which allows the possessor to pursue a wide range of employment because it is still a science degree. They would appreciate your medical skills and ability to 'think like a doctor.'"
But it wasn't reality.
An employer looking to fill a $10 an hour job will be weirded out by having a medical doctor on the staff. He knew it. But he applied to those nursing assistant positions anyway. It didn't hurt because there were many days that there were no doctor positions posted on the job boards. It was better to apply to A job rather than NO job.
Tired of hearing criticism and feeling like he wasn't doing "enough," Don created his own residency position out of the bedroom in his apartment.
He would be the head of his residency. For the next four years, he would train himself to diagnose and treat patients. Who cares if most of his experience has come from cutting on cadavers while in medical school? This shouldn't be too bad. He put in a few hours as a volunteer at the clinic where he was treating V.D. and ear infections. He would simply open up his very own V.D. and minor respiratory infection practice. He would then work his way into more complex diseases at some point.
Dr. Don visited the Office Max where he purchased stacks of generic billing receipts and card stock to print his business cards (he discovered to his delight that they now make special printing paper that doesn't leave perforated edges).
He went home and purchased medical supplies off of Ebay for $15.73. They were slightly used and came from an estate sale from the untimely death of Dr. Geezer McGee. Dr. McGee did things the "old" way, so the supplies were slightly dated, but they would do the job. Dr. Don would have purchased better supplies, but he is severely in debt and had to go for what would do the job.
Dr. Don went home and set up his home office. He couldn't yet afford an office because he was in a Catch-22 where he needed income in order to afford an office. He thought about running a virtual office with an answering service and where he would either meet patients at their homes, in the hallways of the hospitals, or in the special office that he could rent by the hour like he was in Hollywood and Vine. He contacted a guy who graduated two years ahead of him for advice who then put him in touch with Dr. Louise. Dr. Louise has practiced medicine for 15 years and frequently allows new doctors to use her office to meet patients in exchange for free help from the new doctor in diagnosing the occasional cold when she was backed up.
Dr. Don picked up his first case.
He went down to the hospital and waited in the lobby. He saw many of his old classmates hanging around in their JC Penney suits. Their entire conversations revolved around which emergency rooms were filled with the most uninsured people. They were all giving each other tips on what forms to fill out and what time they needed to show up in order to hit the rush just right.
Dr. Don saw a guy who was bleeding out of his ear, high as a kite, and who had no health insurance. He tripped over his other classmates who clamored for the work and found a social worker who offered to get the state to pay $200 to diagnose and treat the crackhead.
Dr. Don took the crackhead back to his "office." It turned out that the crackhead had gotten into a knife fight and had a cut in his earlobe that required stitches. He got right to work sewing on the ear.
Due to his inexperience and the adrenaline rush, Dr. Don not only forgot to clean the wound, but mistakenly prescribed an antibiotic that only works on pneumonia. The crackhead got a major infection where he lost part of his ear.
Dr. Don was then sued for medical malpractice by the crackhead who would have otherwise been tossed out of the hospital that day for not having health insurance. He lost and his premiums skyrocketed thanks, in part, to the fact that he also failed to miss tell-tale signs of an obvious heart attack in another patient, and spinal meningitis in another.
After initially believing that he was one of "the chosen ones" (or one of the "lucky bastards") for getting into medical school, his search for a residency was quickly sucking the life out of him. He sent his resumes to OCI, but nobody offered to even interview him. Career services had spammed his inbox every semester and assured everybody that even somebody in the 99% once got a job interview so nobody should "worry" because they will all find jobs eventually. However, at graduation, only 8 members of his class had landed residencies with "prestigious" medical facilities. Another 23 landed something at the free clinic. Another 27 were still planning to work at their old internships and hoped that the newest batch of resumes that they were mailing out would land them "something." Another 15 had taken various positions such as food sample presenter at the grocery store and perfume counter assistant at Macy's. Another 19 were going to get their business degree.
Months later, his bills becoming due, one deferment down, and the latest batch of 230 resumes being ignored, Dr. Don decided to create his own residency.
It's what people told him to do. Why, he was now a doctor who had graduated from medical school. Plus, it was his own fault that he couldn't find a residency. He should have "tried harder" while in medical school to get into the top 10% of his class. Besides that, he should have "tried harder" to get a residency. It isn't enough that he sent out 300 or even 500 or 1,000 resumes and chased down every last residency position in a mall in the bad part of town in the middle of Butt Feck Idaho. (Actually, he let that one go and didn't apply for it because it was clear across the country. Now, he wonders if he's completely missed his one opportunity to ever have a residency). He needed to call and harass these employers to see if they got his resume, otherwise they wouldn't know that he really wanted this job and he wasn't just simply spamming them. He needed to redo the margins on his resume and properly space the dates because the employers would automatically throw it in the garbage can if they figured out that he wasn't insanely dedicated to detail. He needed to qualify his "interests" section and specify where he liked to travel because its not enough just to say that he liked to travel. He needed to write the name of his medical school organizations on his resume in bold and italics, otherwise, the employer who was absentmindedly scanning his resume for the exactly two seconds they dedicate to each individual resume might miss that he was "involved" while in school and was simply a loser who went home and took a nap after class. He needed better "Thank You" notes, otherwise, they will think he is insincere about wanting the job. He needed to fold his hands in a particular way during the interview because if he gestured too much, he would look a bit threatening and maybe like he didn't even want the job. He needed to go to more medical conferences and meet other practicing doctors because nobody likes to hire people who they've never met. He needed to show up at happy hour with the local medical association because he needed to pass out business cards like candy. He needed to shine his shoes because dirty shoes suggest disorganization and inability to take his image as a successful attorney seriously.
This guy was a complete failure because he only did about half of it.
Where he went to school and the sheer lack of residency positions had nothing to do with his unemployment. He was just a creep. A loser. What in the hell is he doing here? He doesn't belong here. And if he can't dedicate every breathing second to making himself the perfect candidate in the way that Nicole Kidman should have tried harder to be a Stepford Wife (for even if she was a Stepford Wife, she obviously still wasn't Stepford-y enough). If it means slapping on a little rouge and pretending like he watches Boston Red Sox games, it didn't hurt a damn thing because he would be a complete moron if he didn't do it. This is a competition, my friends. Perfect resume margins said everything that the employer needed to know about Dr. Don's ability to diagnose cancer. If he didn't correct those margins, the employer would take notice and draw an immediate conclusion that Dr. Don was just the kind of guy that missed those subtle symptoms that House would catch.
He also wasn't applying for nursing positions. Or jobs for orderlies, medical billing, or lab technicians. He was told by the nay sayers, "Hey, you have a medical degree, which allows the possessor to pursue a wide range of employment because it is still a science degree. They would appreciate your medical skills and ability to 'think like a doctor.'"
But it wasn't reality.
An employer looking to fill a $10 an hour job will be weirded out by having a medical doctor on the staff. He knew it. But he applied to those nursing assistant positions anyway. It didn't hurt because there were many days that there were no doctor positions posted on the job boards. It was better to apply to A job rather than NO job.
Tired of hearing criticism and feeling like he wasn't doing "enough," Don created his own residency position out of the bedroom in his apartment.
He would be the head of his residency. For the next four years, he would train himself to diagnose and treat patients. Who cares if most of his experience has come from cutting on cadavers while in medical school? This shouldn't be too bad. He put in a few hours as a volunteer at the clinic where he was treating V.D. and ear infections. He would simply open up his very own V.D. and minor respiratory infection practice. He would then work his way into more complex diseases at some point.
Dr. Don visited the Office Max where he purchased stacks of generic billing receipts and card stock to print his business cards (he discovered to his delight that they now make special printing paper that doesn't leave perforated edges).
He went home and purchased medical supplies off of Ebay for $15.73. They were slightly used and came from an estate sale from the untimely death of Dr. Geezer McGee. Dr. McGee did things the "old" way, so the supplies were slightly dated, but they would do the job. Dr. Don would have purchased better supplies, but he is severely in debt and had to go for what would do the job.
Dr. Don went home and set up his home office. He couldn't yet afford an office because he was in a Catch-22 where he needed income in order to afford an office. He thought about running a virtual office with an answering service and where he would either meet patients at their homes, in the hallways of the hospitals, or in the special office that he could rent by the hour like he was in Hollywood and Vine. He contacted a guy who graduated two years ahead of him for advice who then put him in touch with Dr. Louise. Dr. Louise has practiced medicine for 15 years and frequently allows new doctors to use her office to meet patients in exchange for free help from the new doctor in diagnosing the occasional cold when she was backed up.
Dr. Don picked up his first case.
He went down to the hospital and waited in the lobby. He saw many of his old classmates hanging around in their JC Penney suits. Their entire conversations revolved around which emergency rooms were filled with the most uninsured people. They were all giving each other tips on what forms to fill out and what time they needed to show up in order to hit the rush just right.
Dr. Don saw a guy who was bleeding out of his ear, high as a kite, and who had no health insurance. He tripped over his other classmates who clamored for the work and found a social worker who offered to get the state to pay $200 to diagnose and treat the crackhead.
Dr. Don took the crackhead back to his "office." It turned out that the crackhead had gotten into a knife fight and had a cut in his earlobe that required stitches. He got right to work sewing on the ear.
Due to his inexperience and the adrenaline rush, Dr. Don not only forgot to clean the wound, but mistakenly prescribed an antibiotic that only works on pneumonia. The crackhead got a major infection where he lost part of his ear.
Dr. Don was then sued for medical malpractice by the crackhead who would have otherwise been tossed out of the hospital that day for not having health insurance. He lost and his premiums skyrocketed thanks, in part, to the fact that he also failed to miss tell-tale signs of an obvious heart attack in another patient, and spinal meningitis in another.
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