I just got an email that the New York bar exam materials will be available next week. I wish they'd been available earlier; last week I had to do New Jersey's to meet the deadline for relatively cheaper enrollment fees, and it would have been nice to have been able to take care of both all at once.
For people unfamiliar with the bar, there are two parts to the application process - although some states deal with them separately. There is the actual signing up to take the test, and then there is the moral character application, or whatever the particular state happens to call it, where you have to document large swathes of your life and then the state checks you out to make sure you are "fit" to practice law. States usually request at least 10 years worth of addresses and previous jobs (some want more), and you can imagine what a headache it is to remember and research all of it.
Fortunately New Jersey only wanted 10 years worth, which meant I didn't have to dig all the way back through all my undergraduate years (although I think I'll have to in the future for some of the other states I'll be applying to). Also, thanks to the fact that a) until recently I rarely moved, b) the fact that I'm a packrat, and c) the Internet Archive I was able to get most of it together without too much trouble (though other states may be more difficult if they want more particulars). But it was a fairly unpleasant experience nonetheless.
The problem is, the exercise of gathering this information forced me to revisit a couple of jobs from early in my career that I would prefer to forget about, they were so unpleasant. I don't mean that they had annoyances - every job has its ups and downs, and I'm not such a prima donna that I expect complete vocational perfection. But I do expect to be treated with a modicum of respect, and sadly there were a handful of jobs years ago where it was missing.
What troubles me most when I think about them is how I allowed myself to be bullied by my bosses. In two of the most poignant examples, I worked for small companies, and reported directly to their founders. I wouldn't say that this situation is always a problem, but it is risky when there's no layer of bureaucracy to protect you from a difficult boss. Whether a job situation like this will work out is entirely dependent on how well the boss is able to communicate their expectations, and how much they value you. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, "how much do they not irrationally undervalue you," since it would never seem to be in their interests to disempower their employees, yet for whatever reason that's what some of them do. At least that's what a few of them did to me.
In a way their behavior was so egregiously wrong as to almost be laughable. But my discomfort stems from a sense that I did not do enough to stand up for myself sooner. With hindsight I can see that the only way to deal with these jobs was to leave them, but it took me a long time to accept that it was absolutely, positively ok to do that. Necessary, even. And not at all my fault. How could it possibly be my fault that my salary showed up three weeks late every month? How could it possibly be my fault that my boss refused to read my emails and cancelled every meeting I made with him? How could it be my fault that he never accepted any of my technical explanations and always looked to my (male) colleagues to verify it?
These are examples from my French job, but the other few horrid jobs had similar strange examples of behavior by my boss that made it impossible for me to succeed at the job. In all these jobs it was just a matter of time before I was able to recognize the situation and stop hitting my head against the wall trying to do the impossible and make the situation different.
And, of course, I'm certainly not talking about all my jobs. As I got more experienced and more confident I was able to choose better situations from the outset and then navigate them successfully. But when I was young and naïve, I was vulnerable to wishful thinking about what I thought the job could be that often blinded me to the reality of what the job actually was.
I don't like thinking about that period because I don't like remembering how much these jobs really hurt. For the French job I remember the specific moment where I suddenly realized that I was showing the same pathology as a battered spouse: being too afraid to stand up for myself, then finally working up the courage to do so, only to back off when my boss through me enough of a bone that I could rationalize how things were going to somehow magically get better - when inevitably they wouldn't, and the cycle would repeat. It's not a time in my life I'm particularly proud of.
But I did ultimate break free, and that's good to remember, especially as I set off for a new career notorious for employer dysfunction. I am ok with working hard and long hours; I am ok with the work being hard. But I am not ok with being a psychic punching bag for disrespectful employers. I've already paid my dues on that score, and I'm not paying anymore. Because what experience has taught me is that I don't have to. There is nothing so wonderful about a soul-crushing job that can warrant putting up with it. When you're young and inexperienced it's hard to believe that you actually have a choice. But the gift of experience is being able to know for sure that you do.
Backdated to when I started writing this. Posted 3/25.