That’s not to say it hasn’t been rough, though. The hours are long, and the learning curve steep, and many days I’ve come home late, exhausted, and feeling a little battered.

One of the things I’ve realized about myself is that I place a lot of value, and derive a lot of my feelings of self-worth, from feeling competent. I feel good about myself when I do something well, and quickly. I like it when people feel they can rely on me. In some ways, I have gotten less ambitious with my career aspirations as time has passed- there are just too many things I enjoy doing for me to sacrifice them entirely for the sake of achieving one particular career goal- but I still want my bosses and my colleagues to view me as a strong performer, someone who can be counted on, someone whose work need not be triple-checked because it’s going to be right the first time.

This is, of course, incompatible with a new job. In every new job (or every one worth having, maybe), there is that ramp up period where you are essentially a total idiot. Every time you want to do something, you have to ask someone how it works. You need to learn the new systems, the parts of the job you’ve never done before. You don’t realize you’re supposed to keep a particular ball in the air until you’ve dropped it.

I’ve been doing that a lot- dropping balls I didn’t realize I needed to keep in the air. Nothing catastrophic – nothing that has changed the course of a case or damaged a client – but MAN, it blows.  A few nights ago, I bolted straight upright in bed at 1am, having just then realized that I’d totally goofed something up for the next morning, and would need to try to get in touch with a bunch of people before 7am. This led to me fretting aloud that I would be sacked and John trying his best to console me while wishing (like a rational person) that I would just let him sleep because dear god, it was 2am.

It worked out fine, of course. I was not sacked, the inconvenience was minor, people were understanding. This is, after all, completely normal. It’s appropriate for me to keep bothering my colleagues and bosses to have them review what I’m doing. In our profession, it would be risking malpractice NOT to do that when you’re brand new. The consequences of an uncaught mistake can be huge. No one is actually concerned or annoyed that I keep checking in with them, because it’s the right thing to do.

Rationally, I know this. But emotionally, I’ve felt a little adrift. I prefer being the expert to the novice. I have to keep reminding myself not to over-apologize: everyone expects a new person to make a few missteps, but if I keep telling people that I feel like an incompetent nitwit, they’re going to start to believe me. And I’m not, really: I’m getting better already. I know that each of the few flubs I’ve made so far will never be made again. Experience is the best teacher, etc. etc.

This week it feels like I’ve turned a corner. Every day I’ve walked in knowing what I needed to get done, and I’ve caught a couple of things that other people have missed. I’m busy, but feel less frantic. (It helps that for the first time in 6 weeks, I have no filing deadline this week.)  At a lunch with coworkers yesterday, I felt more a natural part of the crowd then someone observing a new group she’s just joined. I’m sure there will be more screw ups ahead – it’s inevitable – but maybe, just maybe, I’m starting to get the hang of this.  Thank god.

And yet somehow, even when I know that what I’m trying to do is prove, to the extent that I can, that y does not exist, I still feel like I’ve failed at the day when at the end of many hours of research, all I have to say is “I didn’t find anything.”  Even when THAT WAS THE POINT.  Plus, there’s the nervous tummy feeling that comes with telling your boss that something doesn’t exist because, well, you THINK it doesn’t, and you’re pretty sure you’ve searched everywhere, but WHO KNOWS what kind of research savants might be out there looking for the other side, and what they might have found.  And if y DOES exist? And they find it?  Oof, I just shuddered a little thinking about it.

From this description, I realize this all sounds very dramatic and life or death.  It’s not. I know it’s not. The issue is arcane and not sexy and it’s really not that big a deal.  But man, I hope today involves something other than attempting to prove a negative.

It’s a casual place, everyone there wears jeans, but I can’t very well show up in jeans on my first day.  But I don’t want to be the stiff in the suit, either.  Do I have any gray pants that still zip up?  What about sweaters that are long enough to cover the pooch?  Will everyone be able to tell right away, or can I get away with not telling my new peers for a few days that oh, by the way, I’ll be taking a leave in March?

I get up, finally, and decide to go for a head-clearing run, but succeed only in reviving my hacking cough and the stiffness in my left hamstring. 

My particular boss isn’t getting in until lunchtime- remember to bring a book in case no one is expecting me and there’s no desk for me yet.  Remember he said that was a possibility, but not to take it personally.

Eat a solid breakfast, protein and calcium and complex carbs.  Water, vitamin.

Remember, there are no restaurants around the new office, so don’t forget a lunch and snacks.  No one wants to be the girl who fainted on her first day.

Shower, dress, keys, bag, out the door:  the first day of my new job.  My first law job that doesn’t have a defined end date.  The job I was dying to get.  Deep breath.

Well, not JUST be.  We are still not, technically speaking, really fully unpacked from our move, so I should be doing some of that.  And there are errands, ever errands- groceries and Target and hardware store and to the mall for a birthday gift and on and on…but I can do those things on my own time, during non-peak weekday hours, instead of cramming them all into one frantic weekend.  It’s delicious.

It’s hard, though, to break the habit of feeling like you’re doing something wrong if you’re not busy.  I felt guilty, ridiculously enough, when I took a 20 minute nap on the couch this afternoon.  As if there is some prize for peak achievement during a week off.  As if I am somehow wasting my day by allowing myself to listen to my body and sleep when it’s tired, even if that’s at four o’clock in the afternoon.

So I’ve starting making to do lists for each day.  I’m actually writing down, with little checkboxes and everything, such self-indulgent items as “go to a movie” and “finish book club book.”  Sure, the lists also include things like “order drawer pulls” and “unpack office,” but I’ve made sure to intersperse those chores with things like “take a three mile walk.”

Apparently, in order to allow myself to take my leisure time at a leisurely pace without anxiety-inducing guilt, I need to write it down as a to-do.  With checkboxes.  It’s sick, really.

The interview was scheduled for 9am.  I left the house at 7:15, in plenty of time to get to my office, do some last minute reading up on the company, have a good luck orange juice, put on the suit-appropriate pumps I leave in my desk drawer, and make my way to the interview location.

And then the red line exploded.  I waited 15 minutes for the red line to come, and when it did, there was absolutely NO ROOM.  So I waited 5 minutes for another one.  No room.  Finally, determined to wedge myself on the next train no matter what, I squooshed onto an incredibly crowded train.  It was now 7:45.  It takes at least 20 minutes to get downtown.  A little rushed, but still enough time for me to buy my good luck oj, swoop by the office to pick up my shoes and cram a little, and make my way over there.

My phone started ringing with an unknown number as I was climbing the stairs up from the train at 8:05.

“Hello?”  I said.

“Hi, pseudo?  This is hiring attorney from place you’re interviewing, I -”

and then the line went dead.

THANKS FOR NOTHING, AT&T.

A few seconds later, as I was in Walgreens for the all-important oj purchase, the phone rang again.

“Hi, pseudo?  This is hiring attorney again.”

“Ah, this is a much better connection.  Sorry about before, I was just coming up from the el.”

“Oh, good, so are you on your way here?”

“Well, no, I was thinking I’d swing by my office first and then head over there.”

*long, ominous pause*

“Did you not get the email?”

“I’m sorry?”

“We sent you an email yesterday saying the interview had been rescheduled to 8.”

“Oh! No! I did not get an email!”

“Well, please get here as soon as you can.”

So I SPRINTED to my office to get interview appropriate shoes, jumped in a taxi, ran into the building as I pulled on my suit jacket, and spent the next three hours of interviews trying to tamp down the residual adrenaline coursing through my veins and answer questions in a semi-coherent fashion.  I’m not sure I succeeded.

On the way over, though?  I checked my email- no message telling me we were rescheduled.  I mentioned that to the hiring attorney and she sort of sighed and said “oh, yeah, we’ve had some trouble with our email.”

!!?!

Don’t you think that if you’d been having trouble with your email, and you were making a last-minute change that required someone to be at an interview an hour earlier than planned, you’d, I don’t know, PICK UP THE PHONE?

Needless to say, I ate cookies for lunch.  I felt I’d earned them.

When juries are deliberating, the jury room is “guarded” by a U.S. Marshall.  This is not so much to protect the jury from any nefarious characters as it is to guard their cell phones (which they’re not allowed to take into the jury room with them) and to say “all rise!” when the jury comes back into court.

Anyway, there was a jury out in a courtroom nearby where I was working today, and as I walked into the building, I heard one U.S. Marshall say to another that he’d been suddenly assigned to guard the jury room and hadn’t brought a newspaper.  Thinking I could do my good deed for the day, I pulled my kindle out of my bag (I use it for commuting) and said “here, you can borrow this.  I’ve got a bunch of mysteries loaded on there.”

“Thanks!” he said.  “What is it?”

“It’s a Kindle,” I said.  “It’s like an electronic book reader.  The books are already all loaded on there.”

“Do you have ‘When Bad Things Happen to Good People?’” he asked?

“Ah….no.  Sorry.  But I have ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’  That’s a pretty good one.”

“Okay, I’ll try the one you like.  How does it work?”

“Well, I’ll call up the book…here it is.  Now you just start reading, and press ‘next page’ to turn the page.”

“I’m going to have to get my glasses,” he said, a little uncertainly.

“It’s really easy, I promise,” I said, and I continued upstairs to the office, leaving my precious kindle in the hands of the grandfatherly-looking Marshall.  I mentally patted myself on the back for introducing someone new to this fabulous new technology, and for selflessly lending out my fancy device.  What a kind and lovely person I am!

Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the office door.

“Hi, pseudo,” the Marshall said.  “I’m going to give this back to you.  I…I think I’ll just do a crossword or something.”

“Were you having trouble with it?” I said.  “I can answer any questions you have.”

“No,” he said. “It’s…it’s just not my kind of thing.”

Oh. Okay.  I took the kindle back, the thanked me, and went on his way.  I felt a little bad, foisting technology upon him like that, when it clearly made him uncomfortable.  Fancy gadgets aren’t for everyone, I told myself, and maybe some old dogs don’t want to learn new tricks.

Curious to see how far he’d gotten, I turned it on and looked at the page where he left off.  There, clear as day, was a description of Lisbeth Sander’s investigation of a man who paid for sex with adolescents in Estonia.

Ah.  Right.  Perhaps it was the incredible amounts of casual sex and violence and not the “next page” button that did it.  Duly noted.

What happened was this: my colleague only had one suit that wasn’t at the dry cleaners, and when the trial was pushed back she was worried about wearing the same suit two days in a row.  So I told her I’d do the same thing out of solidarity, and also to minimize dry cleaning bills.  We both wore different blouses, and I don’t think anyone noticed.  But I did worry about it a little bit, because Americans seem sort of uniquely obsessed with clothing cleanliness (which, as Jess pointed out, is viewed as wasteful by the rest of the world).

I suspect that the answers to “is it okay to wear it twice in a row” would have been different if the item of clothing in question had been, say, a sweater.  And I think that’s so interesting, because I definitely don’t wash a sweater every time I wear it (that’s why you wear a tshirt under the sweater, amiright?) but I would still feel self-conscious wearing the same sweater two days in a row.  I would worry that people would THINK I was unhygienic.  Perhaps the lesson here is that I should stop worrying so much what other people think.

A big part of the study abroad experience is noticing cultural differences, and for me some of the most interesting observations were of the smallest differences, like the way the French grocery shop, or the way “smokers” only refers to those people who smoke a pack a day, not the generally-accepted practice of having one or two cigarettes a day, with or after a meal.

One of the things I noticed was that the French are way less bothered by the idea of wearing the same outfit two days in a row than Americans are.  One week, my host mother wore the same (impossibly chic) blouse to work three different times.  She bathed in between, and changed out of the blouse when she got home at the end of the day, but she showed no compunction about wearing the same highly distinctive blouse several days in a row. Where Americans, in my experience, go to great lengths to change clothes regularly and are afraid of people thinking they’re dirty or gross, the French seemed totally unconcerned.  (And just to head off any jokes: my host mother never smelled bad, and in general I found that whole stereotype about French folks to be overblown, though I’m sure reasonable people might disagree with me.)

I bring this up for a very specific reason.  I don’t have to wear a suit to work every day, but I do have to wear a suit on the days that trials start.  Yesterday was one of those days, so I wore my favorite dowdy skirt suit, comfortable and fresh from the cleaners, to work in the morning.

When I got to work, I found out that, unbeknownst to me, the trial had been pushed to today.  So I was wearing a suit for no reason. Also: heels.  Swell! Inter-office communication fail!

So my question is this: how would you feel about wearing the same suit (with a different blouse) two days in a row?  I’m not going to tell you what I did- I want to hear your opinions first.  So that you can have full information: it’s a classic black skirt suit, nothing too distinctive or memorable, and I’d have changed the blouse I wore underneath.  Thoughts?

I’m back from my trip to New Orleans for the half marathon, which was followed immediately by a business trip to California.  You know what New Orleans and California have in common? No snow.  Also: delicious foods that I can’t get in Chicago.  (Though those foods are not similar to each other: I’m left craving hush puppies and beignets from New Orleans and from L.A., those fabulous huge salads full of produce that one can only dream about during a Chicago winter.  And pinkberry.)

I’ll definitely want to tell you more about the half marathon (with pictures! of me making goofy faces!) but for now it appears that I am late for work.  Which I have to walk through the snow to get to.  Not that I’m bitter.

On Wednesday, Marge started crying, rather noisily, at her desk.  My coworker and I went out to investigate (we are not made of stone) and found her mopping at her eyes with paper towels (we are not made of stone, but we are not made of money, either, and we were out of Kleenex.  At Marge’s suggestion, I went down to procurement and got some raggedy one-ply tissues, which were a minor improvement over the paper towels, plus now I know they have tissues in procurement.  Never have to buy office tissues again, bitches!)

It turns out that Marge’s father is very sick.  He’s probably dying.  Poor Marge and her sister are trying to set up hospice care so he can get out of the hospital and come home.  We heard about this in some detail on Wednesday when the crying jag happened.  Then again on Wednesday afternoon as we came back from lunch.  Then again on Wednesday evening as Marge was leaving for the day.

Thursday he was worse.  Marge is a mess.  She cried several times at work.  She left early to go home and help her sister finalize plans for bringing their dad home.  As she was leaving, she said they weren’t sure he was going to make it through the night.

I feel terrible for Marge.  This is a very difficult thing she’s going through.  But I also…how do I put this delicately…. I don’t really KNOW Marge.  I cannot think of much I can say that would be comforting.  You know who I do know?  My boss.  You know what I know about him?  He is not the sort to really take a shine to his employees spending an hour over the course of the work day nodding sympathetically and listening to the woes of a substitute secretary.  Yesterday, I heard Marge talking to him for at least fifteen minutes about her dad.  You don’t know my boss, but trust me when I say that a fifteen minute conversation about ANYTHING would make him twitchy- he’s a fast-moving guy- and I could hear him getting more and more impatient as the conversation ran on and on.

Today is Marge’s last day with us, probably.  Our regular secretary is scheduled to come back on Monday.  But I wonder: how best to handle it when a near-stranger tells you a LOT about a very difficult family situation? At work? Where your boss would like you to be, you know, working?  I do not want to abandon Marge- she seems like a lovely lady and she’s clearly struggling- but I’m just not sure what to say.  What is the proper way to give support (and potentially condolences) to a near-stranger who has a demonstrated ability to talk at some length and in tremendous detail about a very difficult family situation?  Can I continue to nod sympathetically and say “mmm,” and “oh, that’s hard,” or is there something more specific, perhaps, that I should offer?  Potentially something that will get me back to my desk in under 30 minutes?  Or should I just say eff it to my work and give her as much time as she needs to talk it out?  Truly, give me a script here, people.  I’m at a loss.