I've updated the previous post with the answer. The real event announcement is for the "Sexual Politics of Meat" slide show. Really. If anyone who reads this goes, report back to me. I'd go, but I have somewhere else I need to be. It would be ironic if I could say something like "I'd go, but I have a dinner appointment at the Outback Steakhouse." But that would be a lie. Oh well.

The 1Ls are the Journals Fair right now. We have a gazillion journals here (I think around 10, but I'm not totally sure), all open to 1Ls (all excluding the Harvard Law Review, that is -- but I'm not talking about them here because they don't recruit at the journals fair and they're a totally separate entity), and all pretty much the same. The big differences are size -- the smaller ones promote people up the ranks faster out of necessity, so you generally get to do more more quickly, and I've also found you get to know more people at the smaller ones because meetings are more intimate and you're always seeing the same people -- and obviously subject matter. And once you're article editing, interest in the subject matter does matter a little, but really not even all that much, and at the lower ranks, checking footnotes, subject doesn't really seem to matter at all.

I worked on a big journal and a small journal last year, and, if my last paragraph didn't give it away, I liked the smaller one better. Less bureaucracy, got to meet more people, had a more rewarding experience. The bigger one gave me a lot more free food though. And really the differences were mostly at the margin and neither was a tremendously different experience from the other. And from what I've heard from friends, they're all really pretty much the same.

That said, if you're choosing a journal -- anywhere, not just here -- I'd say to choose it based on the people you meet. If you like them and feel like you want to hang out with them and work with them and get to know them, that's probably going to be a fine choice. If you don't seem to click, even if you like the subject better, it'll just be less fun. And so little of the work you'll do is subject-specific that it probably won't make up for the people difference.

And, just to undercut the actual advice in this post, I'll finish with something trying to be funny. I mentioned "rising up the ranks" in the journal. That may not have been clear. So here are the twenty ranks of journal work positions:

1. Guy who checks to make sure the commas are all the same length in all of the footnotes.
2. Girl who laminates the bluebook covers so they don't get torn.
3. Guy who keeps track of when the library books are due and sends out a reminder e-mail when it's getting close.
4. Girl who makes sure all of the red pens have ink.
5. Guy who counts the words in the article by hand and divides by 250 to determine the rough estimate page count.
6. Girl who collects the call numbers for all of the sources from the library catalog.
7. Guy who photocopies the sheet with the call numbers.
8. Vice President of Bluebook Rule 5.
9. Vice President of Bluebook Rule 7.
10. Girl who runs the elections for the Bluebook Vice President positions.
11. Guy who buys mini Kit Kat bars for the footnote-checking sessions in the library.
12. Girl who reserves the tables in the library for the footnote-checking sessions.
13. Guy who checks the footnotes for proper form.
14. Girl who checks the work of the guy who checks the footnotes for proper form.
15. Guy who checks the work of the girl who checks the work of the guy who checks the footnotes for proper form.
16. Girl who calls the author to tell him someone from the journal will be calling him soon to talk about the article.
17. Guy who calls the girl who calls the author to find out if she spoke to him or just left a message.
18. Girl who makes a list of everyone else's jobs.
19. Guy who rewrites the girl's list because he has nothing else to do.
20. Editor-In-Chief