Maybe it’s just the heat, but I’m a bit frustrated at my school. The law school cafe isn’t open during the summer. I’m still waiting on grades (just one left, though). The financial aid office hasn’t been very communicative. So I’m probably over-reacting to a minor exchange I had with the career office this week.
Let me preface this by saying that I’m not seriously looking for a job. I am however trying to figure out what I’m going to do with this degree (answers range from staying where I am to working for the public defender). That means if there are chances to interview or talk with people in the legal profession, I’ll take them.
This week’s exchange with the career office left with the same question I’ve had several times since I started law school at Catholic U: Would it hurt to JUST ANSWER MY QUESTION?
We’ve been getting e-mails about fall recruiting on campus. I noticed a link to the Fall Recruiting packet during a recent login to our online jobs database. So I read through it and hadn’t seen anything about whether 2Es could participate. I returned to the database and noticed that most (perhaps all) of the employers interviewing on campus are only interviewing students who are 2D, 3D, 3E, and 4E. Makes sense, right? You want to catch students during their last summer.
I was still curious, however, as to whether there were opportunities for 2Es during fall recruiting. If there were I’d at least submit my resume. If there weren’t I wouldn’t go through the trouble of updating my resume, etc. So I emailed the career office, asking if there would be chances for 2Es to interview during fall recruiting and that I had reviewed the packet and the OCI opportunities and wasn’t sure. The answer I got was: “Follow the provided link to our Fall Recruiting packet. It contains all of the information for participation and deadlines. Let us know if you have any other questions.”
Of course, I went back to the packet and noticed that the definition of “all students” did NOT include 2Es. So I got my answer. But obviously I had missed that in my review of the packet. Would it have been so hard to just say: “Employers don’t typically interview 2Es during fall recruiting, but we’re happy to sit down to discuss options with you.”
One answer (the one I got) says: do it yourself. The other one says: here’s how we can help.
I know which one I wish I was paying for.
It seems like this is a really common problem for evening students. Everything is geared towards the day students. Our career office is worthless. They give us “figure it out yourself” types of answers or, worse, “quit your job and go full-time.” Ha. They also hold all career events during the day so most of us can’t attend. They say it’s because there is low evening student turnout. Okay, so hold the event ONLY in the evening student and encourage day students to come out for it. Duh. Many of my classmates are indeed dropping out or taking on part-time jobs so that they can have more opportunities. Others, like me, have to work full-time and we’re just relying on networking, networking, networking.
Yeah. the big “n” word. Hopefully it’ll pay off (for both of us). Lord knows our schools won’t help.
Holding events during the day kills me! Not only does our school do all the cool career and org events during the day. They’ve also scheduled MANDATORY ethics sessions during the day. (Of course, once people complained we got the e-mail saying that they’ve “added a session in the evening”).
Evidently, our money is plenty good for them to take, but they could care less whether we get good service.