The thing about interning is that you’re just never entirely convinced. At any moment, it feels like the work you’ve done and the effort you’ve made could just go up in smoke. At the end of my six months at the publishing house, the understanding is that if they are unable to hire me, they’ll “make a few phone calls.” At least, that was the understanding that I tried to voice during my original interview, and again after three months when I sat down with my managing editor and got my second offer. Now, however, I entertain doubts. I’m in debt, and I don’t know whether I should keep on top of job searching and I really don’t want to.
It’s a dull sort of niggling sensation, behind everything that I do or feel these days. It’s aches, this lack of certainty. Sleep deprived, I ride the trains to and from this gorgeous city and I want to move there but I persuade myself that I can’t, not yet. There is too much to figure out first, too much unknown.
It could all vanish—San Francisco, writing, editing—just like that. I would have to scrap it and start over again, and who knows where I’d end up. I had a conversation with my best friend from high school recently, and she voiced something that I’ve heard a number of times over the last year, from various close friends, in various refrains.
“You know, Becky, I have friends that I worry about,” she smiled, “but you’re just not one of them. I know you’re going to be fine.”
“Yeah, well, I wish I knew that,” I laughed.
Time is never wasted. I’ll have learned something, after 6 months, right? As long as I truly believe that, that can’t vanish, surely.
And so I keep riding trains and repeating to myself, the promise that the rock of the world was founded securely to a fairy’s wing, perhaps, after all.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
An Ode to Tutoring
“WHETHER I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.”
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
* * *
It’s Saturday morning at 8:45 AM and I am already fully dressed, sitting in a classroom and sweating bullets.
The high school students are on their way.
It’s a practice SAT morning, and for the first time in my life, I’m not taking the test. I’m proctoring, another one of the many benefits that comes from working for a test prep tutoring company.
I can’t remember being more scared of anyone in a really long time. In my mind it doesn’t feel like so long ago at all that I was at Taft, but scanning the room, I don’t recognize these people. They terrify me. They almost look like adults but they’re not. I am sure that given the incentive, they would eat me alive. How is it that anyone actually teaches difficult subjects? All I have to do is watch a clock (I forgot my stopwatch at home, of course), and even so I’m at the brink of a nervous breakdown. I’m sure they could mutiny at any moment, and there would be absolutely nothing I could do.
23 has never felt older. A couple of days ago I learned that Heidi Montag is 22—a year younger than me! I felt stunned but silly at the same time, aghast that I’m starting to overtake celebrities and that shows and movies and popular narratives are no longer centered around my age group. Superficial for knowing let alone caring who Heidi Montag is.
Even worse, I’ve turned into the kind of person who willingly gets up early on Saturday morning, puts on a company t-shirt, and sits through a 4 hour exam because her day job pays so lamely that she simply needs the money. I’m pretty sure my 16 year-old self would emphatically not approve (especially with regards to the t-shirt). She would have never made these choices. Or would she?
There was so much I didn’t like about that person when I was her—her awkwardness, her inability to talk to boys, her incredibly harsh treatment of certain friends—that I have a hard time separating all that embittering and clouding insecurity from what she actually must have been like. I am sure she was quiet and smart and inept. I suspect she seemed promising to her teachers and parents. I wonder how much of her is still here, in whatever it is that I’ve become, and honestly, what she would make of me.
Monday, September 7, 2009
A Fear of Homelessness
My first grade teacher, Mrs. Bauer, had strong feelings regarding the treatment of homeless people.She was a tall, kind woman. We had just finished a unit on saving the wetlands. You could tell that Mrs. Bauer was the kind of person who really cared about this kind of stuff, and not just because you had to. Sometimes I imagined her at home in the evenings, worrying about the environment. I would picture her and her husband at the dinner table, discussing important issues.
"Mr. Bauer?" she would say.
"Yes, Mrs. Bauer?" Mr. Bauer would pause, a forkful of green beans suspended in midair.
"I've been worrying about the Great Blue Herons."
And so on.
Mrs. Bauer had me anxious on behalf of the herons, myself. I tended to take these things pretty seriously. After our unit on conserving electricity, I was vigilant about shutting the fridge as quickly as possible.
"Don't leave that door open!" I'd admonish my dad, innocently pouring himself a glass of milk. "You're killing salmon."
On this fateful day, however, we were not discussing the murder of fish or the endangerment of birds. Mrs. Bauer had turned to humanity. She was talking about how we should consider and treat the people around us in our little, second-grade lives. It was a major topic of hers. Since the beginning of the year, Mrs. Bauer had stressed the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would want others to do unto you." She encouraged all of us to think about where another person is coming from, and to try to put ourselves in his or her shoes ("Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins," suggested reading: Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech).
Mrs. Bauer was on a roll today. She asked us about homeless people. What we thought of them. How we thought most people treated them. I pictured this one guy who hung out on 23rd Street. My dad called him a "bum." I always held my dad's hand and went around the other side of him when we had to go past this guy on the way to Escape From New York Pizza. I would walk fast and try not to look at him and even hold my breath a little bit. I was wondering how and if he ever cleaned his beard when Mrs. Bauer really let it rip.
"The next time one of you sees a homeless person," she held all of us, hypnotized, in her gaze. "I want you to think--once, this person had a home. Once, they had a family, just like me. They are not so different from you or me. Who knows what has happened to them in their life. Any one of us could become homeless."
Anyone could become homeless.
Mrs. Bauer let this sink in. And sink it did. Anyone could become homeless. It didn't take me long to make the logical leap.
I could become homeless.
I thought about it on the walk home. I thought about it while I was doing my homework. I didn't think about it so much during dinner, because it was Chicken Divan and it was really good, but that night, brushing my teeth and climbing into bed, it came back to me.
Anyone could become homeless. I could become homeless.
I doubt that for my classmates this lesson was much of an event in their lives. But for the overly imaginative child, the child whose yuppie parents didn't allow her to watch television, the child who read too many romantic Black Stallion novels, well, it was another story. My eight year old self was ingrained with a fear of homelessness from this point on her life.
I believe that Mrs. Bauer's words stuck with me growing up. They encouraged me (or terrified me, as you would) to be a better student. I think it may be argued that an accute fear of homelessness may develop later in life to a larger fear of failure: of not getting the score on the test that would get the good grades that would earn the good internship that would secure the good job that would prevent, ultimately, homelessness. It all comes back to Mrs. Bauer.
I am not sure if my 8 year old self is as silly as she seems or wiser than us all. Not to wax Dickensian, but in a sense, after all, there's not so much that separates me, or any of us, from destitution. A few people in my life, but people are mortal. My health and my intelligence, my freedom from any major addictions, but these things too have been known to decline or fail. My good fortune. In the end, I think it mostly rides on that.
Work hard, my friends, and stay healthy. Anyone, after all, can become homeless.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Hardy on Family
"Angel sat down, and the place felt like home; yet he did not so much as formerly feel himself one of the family gathered there. Every time that he returned hither he was conscience of this divergence, and since he had last shared in the Vicarage life it had grown even more distinctly foreign to his own than usual. Its transcendental aspirations... were as foreign to his own as if they had been the dreams of people on another planet."Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
The Poor Upper Middle Class Graduate
The three months of my unpaid internship have come and past, and, thankfully, I now find myself gainfully employed—well, gainfully employed to the tune of 14 dollars an hour with no benefits. The book publisher I have been interning for has decided to keep me on, and despite their struggling finances and a company-wide hiring freeze, they’ve signed me for another three months, paid.
On the one hand, it’s an enormous relief, and trust me, I was and am ecstatic. I feared my ability to find other work, and I’ve really loved writing and editing as my—can you believe it—actual job. On the other hand, I have entirely burned through my savings from my previous loathsome-but-unfortunately-better-paying law firm position, leaving me breathtakingly broke at this point in time.
Most of the time, one tries not to think about it. I check WellsFargo.com as little as humanly possible these days. This may be about as intelligent as sticking my head in the sand, but I go into paroxysms of doubt and anxiety when I see the account balances. Aside from paying my rent, my train and bus pass, and insurance, I endeavor to buy nothing. Yes, absolutely nothing. Is this practical? No. Am I in credit card debt? Of course, although nothing, I desperately hope, that two more paychecks (halle-freaking-lejah) won’t sort out.
I have started compiling a list, of those things that I need, want, and generally pine after. It is entitled the When Becky Isn’t Poor Anymore List:
Dry cleaning
Take shoes to cobbler
Blender
Ramekins
Tart pans
Steaming rack
Mascara
Clothes shopping
New laptop
A Subaru Outback Legacy, from approximately 1997
A pony
If some of these items seem frivolous, well, so be it. You try living with four month-old mascara, or having a bag full of clothes that you would really quite like to wear but haven’t been able to since June because you can’t afford to take it to the cleaners. I would like to point out that the computer that I write to you from is literally falling apart. My charming youngest brother Bruce kicked it a few years back, and the hardware has been slowly splitting apart ever since. Yesterday the poor thing lost a foot. It gives me a whole new appreciation for the cliché of not having a leg to stand on.
On a more serious note, however, I do know that credit card debt, however minor, is nothing to dabble in. And there is, as you may have guessed, reader, one inevitable and depression-inspiring solution: the much dreaded phone call to the parents. I can’t bring myself to do it, or at least I haven’t been able to yet. At this point I’d rather pay off interest than admit defeat. My parents are investment bankers, and while they made very positive noises when I announced that I was going to quit my vile law firm job after only nine months, I have and continue to have my doubts about their enthusiasm. Part of me thinks they’re waiting for the call, and I hate that. I so desperately want to make this work on my own, and prove to myself, more than anything, that I’m a competent human being and not just an entitled, impractical, upper middle class brat.
I am amused by the fact that my banker parents have been blessed with markedly impractical children, and I suspect this poetic justice must often be the case in comfortable families. There are four children in my family, and so far, of the three of us that have graduated, we’re batting 3 for 3 going into the arts. My sister Jessica is an assistant in a modern art gallery in
Manhattan, my brother Jason is an aspiring documentary filmmaker/bartender, and then there’s me, book publishing. I don’t know how much my other siblings may have dug into the parental resources or not. At the end of the day, does it matter? Regardless of the exact details, there’s a mindset singular to the newly “self-sufficient” upper middle class college graduate. We have never considered the possibility that we’re not going to be okay. This, I believe, drives our career and life choices just as much as a tenuous financial background may drive another graduate to consulting, i-banking, or, ahem, law school.
The thing is, I think my parents are guilty of more than just spoiling us (which, of course they have, though god knows they’ve tried not to). I was up visiting my parents for a weekend recently, and I had a conversation with my mom. We were in the kitchen and I was attempting to evasively answer her questions about my finances. She started in on describing the path that had led her towards business school, something I’ve heard many times, but something that I hadn’t heard before came up.
“My father, the architect,” she mused, “struggled his whole life. My grandparents even paid for the deposit on the house in Mercer Island, for instance. He just never seemed able to sever that umbilical cord. When I graduated, I was sure I never wanted that to be something I worried about.”
For a moment, I was floored. Images of my own umbilical cord floated up behind my eyes; wrinkled, spongy, and supernaturally white, it was tying me forever to this woman in her sunny kitchen with her 80s Italian pottery and enviable complete Le Creuset set. And then, I recovered. If nothing else, my elite education has given me the ability to draw a counterargument, even if I may not have entirely convinced myself yet.
“But mom,” I said, shimmying a pan the way she taught me. “Surely that can’t be all there is to it. It is not some random happenstance that made all of your children go into the arts. You were an East Asian studies major; Dad was Latin American History. You may have been very happy with your jobs, but they were always your jobs, not your interests. Growing up, you read us C.S. Lewis and the Legend of Davy Crockett, not the Wall Street Journal. I don’t just happen to love literature. I was taught to. And even if I can’t make it work, I think I owe it to myself to try.”
“You’re right,” my mom patted my shoulder. “You go for it, kiddo.”
I don’t know how much she meant it. Most of the time, I don’t think I have half the conviction I pretend to have in what I’m doing right now. But in my better moments, I hope that if I can just scrape by for the next three months, it will all have been worth it. That I’ll look back on my life and think of these as my formative years, when I made a decision about who I am and what I want, and just went for it. Right? Well that’s the theory, anyways.
On the one hand, it’s an enormous relief, and trust me, I was and am ecstatic. I feared my ability to find other work, and I’ve really loved writing and editing as my—can you believe it—actual job. On the other hand, I have entirely burned through my savings from my previous loathsome-but-unfortunately-better-paying law firm position, leaving me breathtakingly broke at this point in time.
Most of the time, one tries not to think about it. I check WellsFargo.com as little as humanly possible these days. This may be about as intelligent as sticking my head in the sand, but I go into paroxysms of doubt and anxiety when I see the account balances. Aside from paying my rent, my train and bus pass, and insurance, I endeavor to buy nothing. Yes, absolutely nothing. Is this practical? No. Am I in credit card debt? Of course, although nothing, I desperately hope, that two more paychecks (halle-freaking-lejah) won’t sort out.
I have started compiling a list, of those things that I need, want, and generally pine after. It is entitled the When Becky Isn’t Poor Anymore List:
Dry cleaning
Take shoes to cobbler
Blender
Ramekins
Tart pans
Steaming rack
Mascara
Clothes shopping
New laptop
A Subaru Outback Legacy, from approximately 1997
A pony
If some of these items seem frivolous, well, so be it. You try living with four month-old mascara, or having a bag full of clothes that you would really quite like to wear but haven’t been able to since June because you can’t afford to take it to the cleaners. I would like to point out that the computer that I write to you from is literally falling apart. My charming youngest brother Bruce kicked it a few years back, and the hardware has been slowly splitting apart ever since. Yesterday the poor thing lost a foot. It gives me a whole new appreciation for the cliché of not having a leg to stand on.
On a more serious note, however, I do know that credit card debt, however minor, is nothing to dabble in. And there is, as you may have guessed, reader, one inevitable and depression-inspiring solution: the much dreaded phone call to the parents. I can’t bring myself to do it, or at least I haven’t been able to yet. At this point I’d rather pay off interest than admit defeat. My parents are investment bankers, and while they made very positive noises when I announced that I was going to quit my vile law firm job after only nine months, I have and continue to have my doubts about their enthusiasm. Part of me thinks they’re waiting for the call, and I hate that. I so desperately want to make this work on my own, and prove to myself, more than anything, that I’m a competent human being and not just an entitled, impractical, upper middle class brat.
I am amused by the fact that my banker parents have been blessed with markedly impractical children, and I suspect this poetic justice must often be the case in comfortable families. There are four children in my family, and so far, of the three of us that have graduated, we’re batting 3 for 3 going into the arts. My sister Jessica is an assistant in a modern art gallery in
Manhattan, my brother Jason is an aspiring documentary filmmaker/bartender, and then there’s me, book publishing. I don’t know how much my other siblings may have dug into the parental resources or not. At the end of the day, does it matter? Regardless of the exact details, there’s a mindset singular to the newly “self-sufficient” upper middle class college graduate. We have never considered the possibility that we’re not going to be okay. This, I believe, drives our career and life choices just as much as a tenuous financial background may drive another graduate to consulting, i-banking, or, ahem, law school.The thing is, I think my parents are guilty of more than just spoiling us (which, of course they have, though god knows they’ve tried not to). I was up visiting my parents for a weekend recently, and I had a conversation with my mom. We were in the kitchen and I was attempting to evasively answer her questions about my finances. She started in on describing the path that had led her towards business school, something I’ve heard many times, but something that I hadn’t heard before came up.
“My father, the architect,” she mused, “struggled his whole life. My grandparents even paid for the deposit on the house in Mercer Island, for instance. He just never seemed able to sever that umbilical cord. When I graduated, I was sure I never wanted that to be something I worried about.”
For a moment, I was floored. Images of my own umbilical cord floated up behind my eyes; wrinkled, spongy, and supernaturally white, it was tying me forever to this woman in her sunny kitchen with her 80s Italian pottery and enviable complete Le Creuset set. And then, I recovered. If nothing else, my elite education has given me the ability to draw a counterargument, even if I may not have entirely convinced myself yet.
“But mom,” I said, shimmying a pan the way she taught me. “Surely that can’t be all there is to it. It is not some random happenstance that made all of your children go into the arts. You were an East Asian studies major; Dad was Latin American History. You may have been very happy with your jobs, but they were always your jobs, not your interests. Growing up, you read us C.S. Lewis and the Legend of Davy Crockett, not the Wall Street Journal. I don’t just happen to love literature. I was taught to. And even if I can’t make it work, I think I owe it to myself to try.”
“You’re right,” my mom patted my shoulder. “You go for it, kiddo.”
I don’t know how much she meant it. Most of the time, I don’t think I have half the conviction I pretend to have in what I’m doing right now. But in my better moments, I hope that if I can just scrape by for the next three months, it will all have been worth it. That I’ll look back on my life and think of these as my formative years, when I made a decision about who I am and what I want, and just went for it. Right? Well that’s the theory, anyways.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Adventures in Clerking: Part I
She was the newest addition to the law clerks at the firm, a recent graduate, in her first real job, excited to be there and to learn and grow as a professional. Already, things were not quite as she had imagined. There were seven lawyers at the firm: three partners, four associates, one big-haired legal secretary, one remarkably crotchety bookkeeper (who seemed to come and go as she well pleased), one incredibly nice and incredibly abused driver, and then the clerks, four of them—Valentina, Kunyu, Laura, and finally her, Becky. All of the clerks were recent grads. All of them had higher aspirations than clerking.
At the end of the first week she realized that there was not going to be any formal, or informal, for that matter, job training. She was doing the best she could.
When Becky arrived, just a few minutes past nine, not a single attorney’s car was in the lot. She recognized Valentina’s beater Toyota, with peeling red paint, and Kunyu’s bike was locked inside the courtyard.
She entered through the kitchen.
“Hey!” Kunyu had a phone tucked between her head and shoulder. She was also in the middle of doing a huge stack of dishes. Attorneys, Becky had quickly learned, were violently allergic to doing their own dishes.
“He—hey,” Becky stammered, not wanting to interrupt Kunyu’s conversation.
“It’s okay,” Kunyu gestured at the phone. “It’s just the fucking court. They put me fucking on hold again. Hello? Yes, I’m calling on behalf of attorney Nicole Ryan? Is this department 47? Good. Yes, she wanted to let you know she’s going to be fifteen minutes late. Yes. Yes, that’s all she told me. That’s all she told me! Okay, bye.” She hung up. “Fucking court clerks.”
The door slammed, and Laura, the clerk-receptionist, traipsed through on her way to the front.
“Oh hey, hey, hey!” she grinned, “ready for another fun-filled day at NAB?”
Kunyu rolled her eyes.
Becky’s office was at the far back upstairs corner of the second building. She spent most of the morning trying to decipher and execute a task that Tom, the head attorney, had given Valentina, which Valentina in turn had given her. None of it had been very clearly explained, and even if it had been, it was still stultifying boring. She slogged through a huge box of documents, trying to figure out what information was relevant, and compiled notes into a memo she eventually intended to give to Tom. She kept at it for a couple hours, but then finally reached a dead end where she really didn’t understand what to do. Grabbing a pen and paper, she headed downstairs and across the courtyard to throw herself on Valentina’s mercy. Valentina had been at the firm for the longest, and as such had been promoted to the position of Tom’s exclusive law clerk (why anyone would want, let alone accept, this promotion, Becky mused, was a mystery). If anyone would be able to decipher these directions, it would be her.
Becky went back in through the kitchen door again. She was greeted by the sight of Kunyu violently kicking the photocopier.
“Fucking—oh hey! Yeah, it’s not working again. Sometimes if you just kick it…”
“Right…” said Becky, “yeah, sure. Uh, I’m just going to go ask Valentina a question.”
Kunyu didn’t hear her. She was busy slamming doors on the machine, and listening to its machinations. Becky inched around her, and crossed the lobby into Valentina’s front office.
Valentina was typing like a madwoman. Her back was to the door.
“Uh… Valentina?” Becky queried.
“Yes?” Valentina whipped around. She had dark unkempt hair, and an aquiline nose, on which were perched a dainty pair of reading glasses. She peered over them, still typing while looking in the other direction.
“Oh!” she stopped typing, finally. “How are you? It’s crazy around here today!” she chortled. “Except, no really. It’s crazy.” She grabbed a document and walked over to the fax machine.
“Uh… fine? Actually, I was hoping I could ask you a question.”
“Sure, sure,” she smiled, “oh shit, though, is this about that Hunsaker stuff? Cause I have no fucking idea. I don’t even think Tom knows what he wants.”
Becky’s heart sank in her chest.
Valentina took a look at it, and gave some suggestions. They weren’t hard and fast answers, but Becky supposed they were better than nothing. She headed back over to the other building, stopping through the kitchen again to get a cup of tea. Liz, the big-haired legal secretary, was helping herself to a bagel. It always seemed like Liz was in the kitchen.
“Better have a bagel…” she muttered, in a strong Long Island accent, “before ya start to get shaky!”
Becky had a very hard time understanding when Liz was talking to her or talking to herself, now and in general. Becky opted for just smiling and nodding. Not to be vicious, but looking at Liz, it was hard to believe that the woman would hurt from any lack of food. Becky tried to estimate how tall Liz was without the hair and six inch heels that she always wore—5’1”? 5’2”? Becky grabbed her tea and retreated from the kitchen before she could become entrenched in conversation with Liz. It was known to happen.
Becky kept at it with the Hunsaker documents, counting down the minutes until lunch. Finally it was 12. She went over to Kunyu’s office, which was right next-door, intending to nonchalantly ask her if she’d like to have lunch in the courtyard together. Becky was still semi-awkwardly trying to make friends.
Kunyu was slumped down in her swivel desk chair, one hand holding a phone to her ear, the other holding her forehead. A strange device was sitting at her desk, and momentarily forgetting to feel awkward, Becky picked it up and started looking at it. It appeared to be a set of goggles, but with two large plastic appliances attached to each side of them.
“Yeah, alright,” said Kunyu. “I’ll try that again.” She hung up the phone.
“What are these?” Becky asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
“Tom’s audio swim goggles,” sighed Kunyu. “Apparently they’re state of the art. Too bad they don’t fucking work!”
“They play music? To listen to under water?”
“Audiobooks, actually. Tom prefers LeCarre mystery novels.”
“Novels?” Becky was amazed. “I didn’t know Tom was much of a swimmer.” Or a reader, come to it. Tom was a very, very, large man, who suffered from diabetes. Swimming was difficult to imagine.
“He’s not. He hates exercising. That’s why he needs the novels.” Kunyu shrugged.
“And you’re fixing these?”
“Yep.”
“That sucks.”
“Tell me about it. We’re in the middle of a double-homicide case, our client is facing a lifetime in prison, and I’m spending my time fixing swim goggles. It’s fucking ridiculous.”
Becky laughed. What else could you do?
“You want to have lunch?”
“Yeah, okay. I think Tom is at Le Maison for lunch, anyways. He won’t be back for at least an hour.”
At the end of the first week she realized that there was not going to be any formal, or informal, for that matter, job training. She was doing the best she could.
When Becky arrived, just a few minutes past nine, not a single attorney’s car was in the lot. She recognized Valentina’s beater Toyota, with peeling red paint, and Kunyu’s bike was locked inside the courtyard.
She entered through the kitchen.
“Hey!” Kunyu had a phone tucked between her head and shoulder. She was also in the middle of doing a huge stack of dishes. Attorneys, Becky had quickly learned, were violently allergic to doing their own dishes.
“He—hey,” Becky stammered, not wanting to interrupt Kunyu’s conversation.
“It’s okay,” Kunyu gestured at the phone. “It’s just the fucking court. They put me fucking on hold again. Hello? Yes, I’m calling on behalf of attorney Nicole Ryan? Is this department 47? Good. Yes, she wanted to let you know she’s going to be fifteen minutes late. Yes. Yes, that’s all she told me. That’s all she told me! Okay, bye.” She hung up. “Fucking court clerks.”
The door slammed, and Laura, the clerk-receptionist, traipsed through on her way to the front.
“Oh hey, hey, hey!” she grinned, “ready for another fun-filled day at NAB?”
Kunyu rolled her eyes.
Becky’s office was at the far back upstairs corner of the second building. She spent most of the morning trying to decipher and execute a task that Tom, the head attorney, had given Valentina, which Valentina in turn had given her. None of it had been very clearly explained, and even if it had been, it was still stultifying boring. She slogged through a huge box of documents, trying to figure out what information was relevant, and compiled notes into a memo she eventually intended to give to Tom. She kept at it for a couple hours, but then finally reached a dead end where she really didn’t understand what to do. Grabbing a pen and paper, she headed downstairs and across the courtyard to throw herself on Valentina’s mercy. Valentina had been at the firm for the longest, and as such had been promoted to the position of Tom’s exclusive law clerk (why anyone would want, let alone accept, this promotion, Becky mused, was a mystery). If anyone would be able to decipher these directions, it would be her.
Becky went back in through the kitchen door again. She was greeted by the sight of Kunyu violently kicking the photocopier.
“Fucking—oh hey! Yeah, it’s not working again. Sometimes if you just kick it…”
“Right…” said Becky, “yeah, sure. Uh, I’m just going to go ask Valentina a question.”
Kunyu didn’t hear her. She was busy slamming doors on the machine, and listening to its machinations. Becky inched around her, and crossed the lobby into Valentina’s front office.
Valentina was typing like a madwoman. Her back was to the door.
“Uh… Valentina?” Becky queried.
“Yes?” Valentina whipped around. She had dark unkempt hair, and an aquiline nose, on which were perched a dainty pair of reading glasses. She peered over them, still typing while looking in the other direction.
“Oh!” she stopped typing, finally. “How are you? It’s crazy around here today!” she chortled. “Except, no really. It’s crazy.” She grabbed a document and walked over to the fax machine.
“Uh… fine? Actually, I was hoping I could ask you a question.”
“Sure, sure,” she smiled, “oh shit, though, is this about that Hunsaker stuff? Cause I have no fucking idea. I don’t even think Tom knows what he wants.”
Becky’s heart sank in her chest.
Valentina took a look at it, and gave some suggestions. They weren’t hard and fast answers, but Becky supposed they were better than nothing. She headed back over to the other building, stopping through the kitchen again to get a cup of tea. Liz, the big-haired legal secretary, was helping herself to a bagel. It always seemed like Liz was in the kitchen.
“Better have a bagel…” she muttered, in a strong Long Island accent, “before ya start to get shaky!”
Becky had a very hard time understanding when Liz was talking to her or talking to herself, now and in general. Becky opted for just smiling and nodding. Not to be vicious, but looking at Liz, it was hard to believe that the woman would hurt from any lack of food. Becky tried to estimate how tall Liz was without the hair and six inch heels that she always wore—5’1”? 5’2”? Becky grabbed her tea and retreated from the kitchen before she could become entrenched in conversation with Liz. It was known to happen.
Becky kept at it with the Hunsaker documents, counting down the minutes until lunch. Finally it was 12. She went over to Kunyu’s office, which was right next-door, intending to nonchalantly ask her if she’d like to have lunch in the courtyard together. Becky was still semi-awkwardly trying to make friends.
Kunyu was slumped down in her swivel desk chair, one hand holding a phone to her ear, the other holding her forehead. A strange device was sitting at her desk, and momentarily forgetting to feel awkward, Becky picked it up and started looking at it. It appeared to be a set of goggles, but with two large plastic appliances attached to each side of them.
“Yeah, alright,” said Kunyu. “I’ll try that again.” She hung up the phone.
“What are these?” Becky asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
“Tom’s audio swim goggles,” sighed Kunyu. “Apparently they’re state of the art. Too bad they don’t fucking work!”
“They play music? To listen to under water?”
“Audiobooks, actually. Tom prefers LeCarre mystery novels.”
“Novels?” Becky was amazed. “I didn’t know Tom was much of a swimmer.” Or a reader, come to it. Tom was a very, very, large man, who suffered from diabetes. Swimming was difficult to imagine.
“He’s not. He hates exercising. That’s why he needs the novels.” Kunyu shrugged.
“And you’re fixing these?”
“Yep.”
“That sucks.”
“Tell me about it. We’re in the middle of a double-homicide case, our client is facing a lifetime in prison, and I’m spending my time fixing swim goggles. It’s fucking ridiculous.”
Becky laughed. What else could you do?
“You want to have lunch?”
“Yeah, okay. I think Tom is at Le Maison for lunch, anyways. He won’t be back for at least an hour.”
Adventures in Clerking: Part II
After a pleasant lunch in the courtyard, Becky stopped by the main building to check her inbox. Tom and a couple other attorneys strolled in through the front, back from their lunch as well. Becky kept her head down and tried to stay out of the way.
“Hey, hey… you,” Tom, Becky realized, was addressing her. “Sit down with us for a second.”
She sat down with him in the center of the lobby, along with Daniel, one of the junior associates, who seemed to be attempting to smile reassuringly. She didn’t quite feel reassured.
“We need you to do a very important project for us,” Tom intoned. He looked very serious. She looked from Tom to Daniel, suddenly feeling nervous.
“Absolutely. Tell me what you need.” Legal pad posed on lap, she readied herself to take thorough notes.
“So you know that case, that, that—”
“Hunsaker,” clarified Daniel.
“That Hunsaker case,” Tom continued fluidly, “what we need is one of those, those—”
“Grids?” supplied Daniel.
“Right, a grid, like a, a—”
“Table.”
“A table, exactly, of the, the—you know, that thing you’ve been working on—”
“The chronology,” Daniel translated, “the Hunsaker chronology that you’ve been researching for us. We’d like you to organize it into a table.”
“Great,” her voice quavered slightly; she prayed they didn’t notice.
“So for columns, no for rows, we want dates, for columns, we want document, bates stamp number, description, source, who was involved, and oh, oh—well let’s start with that.” Tom nodded, satisfied, at Daniel. He scratched his ear. That seemed to be the end of all the instructions she was going to get. She looked down at her pad of paper. She had written down:
grid
table
columns rows, dates
columns doc, bates? stamp #s, ? ? ?
She looked up at both of them. Her mouth felt incredibly dry.
Daniel looked like he had something else to add. In the end, he settled with, “If you have questions, just come talk to me.”
“Okay,” she was reeling, “Would you prefer this done in Word, or Excel?”
“What?” Tom seemed outraged, his voice nearing hysterical. She shrank two inches in her chair. “What is she asking? ‘Excel’? I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a computer program--” started Daniel.
“Excel? I don’t know, I don’t care; we just need a grid, okay? Alright? Just a grid. Simple. Can you do that?”
“Excel will be fine,” Daniel interjected.
“However you want to do it, I don’t care,” Tom was throwing his hands up in the air now. “Just a grid. You can do that, right? That’s not too much to ask for?”
“Of course not,” she felt about the size of a six year old. Just behind Tom’s head, she noticed Laura, the receptionist, was smirking.
“That’s no problem,” with effort, Becky made eye contact with Tom. “If anything comes up, I’ll talk to Daniel.” Thank God for that.
“Okay,” said Tom, somewhat calming. “Great. That will be very, very useful for us. Now Daniel…”
And they headed slowly and loudly upstairs to Tom’s office, debating a finer point on a sexual assault and battery case.
Becky took a deep breath. Laura caught her eye, and laughed.
“That’s a very important project, there,” she grinned. “You better get right to work on that one.”
She looked at her paper. “All he wants is a simple Excel table, right? With like five different columns?”
Laura shrugged, “Sounds like it. But that’s a very important project,” she imitated Tom’s tone, “that is critically important to us. Are you sure you can handle that?”
Finally Becky smiled, but there was still a curl of tension in her stomach. “Ah, man,” she said, “I’m really glad I have that Stanford degree, to prepare me for such difficult projects, such as making a single table in Excel.”
“Excel?” mocked Laura, “what’s Excel?”
Becky smiled. “Laura,” she began, “what’s a ‘bates stamp’—?”
“No, really though,” said Laura, as the phone rang and she reached for it. “You should get going. He’ll buzz you before you know it. It’s one of those days. I can tell.”
Tom buzzed Becky in her office approximately every thirty minutes on the hour and half hour for the rest of the afternoon. She lost track of how many times she printed out the template for the Hunsaker table, ran over to show it to him, and came back with his corrections. Eight times? Ten times? It felt like the most horrendous waste of paper she had ever experienced. At one point, Tom objected to the height of a particular row, and she internally debated whether or not it was worth it to try to explain the Autofit feature of cell sizing. She decided against it, and just adjusted the row manually, even though it was unnecessary.
Nearing the end of the afternoon she felt shredded, a pile of nerves. And for what? she thought. For some rehashing of the information that they already have, that they may or may not actually use in trial. She stepped into Valentina’s office, to drop off the finalized template into Tom and Daniel’s boxes. Not that it was actually filled in yet. Tom just wanted confirmation (ie, more trees to die).
“Hey, hey… you,” Tom, Becky realized, was addressing her. “Sit down with us for a second.”
She sat down with him in the center of the lobby, along with Daniel, one of the junior associates, who seemed to be attempting to smile reassuringly. She didn’t quite feel reassured.
“We need you to do a very important project for us,” Tom intoned. He looked very serious. She looked from Tom to Daniel, suddenly feeling nervous.
“Absolutely. Tell me what you need.” Legal pad posed on lap, she readied herself to take thorough notes.
“So you know that case, that, that—”
“Hunsaker,” clarified Daniel.
“That Hunsaker case,” Tom continued fluidly, “what we need is one of those, those—”
“Grids?” supplied Daniel.
“Right, a grid, like a, a—”
“Table.”
“A table, exactly, of the, the—you know, that thing you’ve been working on—”
“The chronology,” Daniel translated, “the Hunsaker chronology that you’ve been researching for us. We’d like you to organize it into a table.”
“Great,” her voice quavered slightly; she prayed they didn’t notice.
“So for columns, no for rows, we want dates, for columns, we want document, bates stamp number, description, source, who was involved, and oh, oh—well let’s start with that.” Tom nodded, satisfied, at Daniel. He scratched his ear. That seemed to be the end of all the instructions she was going to get. She looked down at her pad of paper. She had written down:
grid
table
columns rows, dates
columns doc, bates? stamp #s, ? ? ?
She looked up at both of them. Her mouth felt incredibly dry.
Daniel looked like he had something else to add. In the end, he settled with, “If you have questions, just come talk to me.”
“Okay,” she was reeling, “Would you prefer this done in Word, or Excel?”
“What?” Tom seemed outraged, his voice nearing hysterical. She shrank two inches in her chair. “What is she asking? ‘Excel’? I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a computer program--” started Daniel.
“Excel? I don’t know, I don’t care; we just need a grid, okay? Alright? Just a grid. Simple. Can you do that?”
“Excel will be fine,” Daniel interjected.
“However you want to do it, I don’t care,” Tom was throwing his hands up in the air now. “Just a grid. You can do that, right? That’s not too much to ask for?”
“Of course not,” she felt about the size of a six year old. Just behind Tom’s head, she noticed Laura, the receptionist, was smirking.
“That’s no problem,” with effort, Becky made eye contact with Tom. “If anything comes up, I’ll talk to Daniel.” Thank God for that.
“Okay,” said Tom, somewhat calming. “Great. That will be very, very useful for us. Now Daniel…”
And they headed slowly and loudly upstairs to Tom’s office, debating a finer point on a sexual assault and battery case.
Becky took a deep breath. Laura caught her eye, and laughed.
“That’s a very important project, there,” she grinned. “You better get right to work on that one.”
She looked at her paper. “All he wants is a simple Excel table, right? With like five different columns?”
Laura shrugged, “Sounds like it. But that’s a very important project,” she imitated Tom’s tone, “that is critically important to us. Are you sure you can handle that?”
Finally Becky smiled, but there was still a curl of tension in her stomach. “Ah, man,” she said, “I’m really glad I have that Stanford degree, to prepare me for such difficult projects, such as making a single table in Excel.”
“Excel?” mocked Laura, “what’s Excel?”
Becky smiled. “Laura,” she began, “what’s a ‘bates stamp’—?”
“No, really though,” said Laura, as the phone rang and she reached for it. “You should get going. He’ll buzz you before you know it. It’s one of those days. I can tell.”
Tom buzzed Becky in her office approximately every thirty minutes on the hour and half hour for the rest of the afternoon. She lost track of how many times she printed out the template for the Hunsaker table, ran over to show it to him, and came back with his corrections. Eight times? Ten times? It felt like the most horrendous waste of paper she had ever experienced. At one point, Tom objected to the height of a particular row, and she internally debated whether or not it was worth it to try to explain the Autofit feature of cell sizing. She decided against it, and just adjusted the row manually, even though it was unnecessary.
Nearing the end of the afternoon she felt shredded, a pile of nerves. And for what? she thought. For some rehashing of the information that they already have, that they may or may not actually use in trial. She stepped into Valentina’s office, to drop off the finalized template into Tom and Daniel’s boxes. Not that it was actually filled in yet. Tom just wanted confirmation (ie, more trees to die).
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