I mentioned something in yesterday's post about starting a summer job today. Particularly alert readers (read: obsessive stalkers of mine) may have noticed that was probably the first time I'd mentioned anything about a summer job, at least since December, when we were first allowed to send out resumes. And the mention in passing yesterday didn't really say anything other than "I have a summer job, and it starts tomorrow." There's a reason I've spent more words talking about the cafeteria food than anything having to do with my summer job. And now that the summer has started, I feel relatively comfortable sharing a story I've been saving, and reluctant to post while I was still looking for summer work.

Back on December 1st, when we were first allowed to send out resumes, it felt like all of my classmates were literally racing to the post office. I had friends applying to over a hundred law firms, or twelve dozen public interest organizations, or every Starbucks on the East Coast. I had been delaying actually sitting down and thinking about the summer job search -- I thought I'd gone to law school to avoid looking for a job, and now, three months in, we had to start sending resumes out? And once I did start thinking about it, I figured that regardless of what I want to do next summer and in the future beyond law school, it probably made sense for me to try to get something different for this summer, so I could explore some other options. And since it's relatively easy for 2Ls to get summer jobs at firms, but less easy for 1Ls to do so, especially in this economy, by not even trying for a firm job, I wasn't really costing myself anything. But it's hard to get hired for something that isn't a law firm in December, when the summer is six months away. And there's pressure to do *something,* since everyone else is.

So I looked through the Public Interest Job Guide we'd received, and I identified a handful of public interest organizations that I'd totally consider working for, in areas I'm interested in. I wasn't passionate about public interest legal work -- but I thought I'd explore, send out some resumes, see if any opportunities ended up sounding really good and would be a nice fit. Totally in good faith, just not things that I was truly passionate about -- not that all of my friends sending out resumes to corporate law firms were totally passionate about them either. So I sent out a dozen resumes, and I posted something flip on the weblog, like "just sent a dozen resumes to places I don't really want to work." Not completely the truth -- it wasn't that I didn't want to work there, just that I wasn't dying to work at any of them, at least not until I'd found out some more about them and what exactly a public-interest legal organization does, anyway -- but not completely a lie.

And a week later, I received an e-mail from someone at one of them, saying, basically, "Thanks for your resume, but according to your weblog, you don't really want to work here. Best of luck." And my stomach dropped. And I realized that I needed to be careful. I mean, she had every right to send me that e-mail -- although I'm not sure she didn't overreact to the post -- but it scared me that I was potentially making myself unemployable by writing this thing, and not doing it anonymously.

But for every hundred potential employers who might find my weblog, decide they don't think my song parodies are very funny, and decide not to hire me because of it, there might be one who reads it and thinks it's pretty funny. And that's probably the place I want to work anyway. So I decided it's worth the risk.

But you're not going to find out what my summer job is anywhere in this post. Or tomorrow's, or the next day's. Because it wouldn't be fair to them, it wouldn't be particularly courteous, and man would I be scared they'd find it and fire me. Even though I have nothing bad at all to say. Day one was awesome, and I can't wait for day two.

So, the moral of my story, fellow webloggers and aspiring webloggers, heed my warning, even if it's six months late. They're gonna find it. So be careful. And be nice to the elderly, too. Because they're generally pretty nice people.