Summer and San Francisco

Long time, no post. My last post mentioned the ridiculousness of the semester so far, and I'm happy to say the situation has fairly improved, thanks very much to two things - as you may guess from the title, those two things would be summer and San Francisco.

First, with great excitement (and relief) I have my summer internship lined up - woohoo! I'll be working as a law clerk with the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) which is one of the leading GLBTQ legal organizations. They're based out of San Francisco, but I'll be working with their one attorney who is down here in Los Angeles. Not only does this mean that I no longer have to spend time looking for a job, but it's given me a great infusion of enthusiasm and excitement, which actually started back when I interviewed with them a couple weeks ago (which I didn't have time to post about). First and foremost, it's a fantastic organization to work with. Despite its name, it is one of the most inclusive GLBTQ legal organizations out there. In terms of impact litigation, some organizations can tend to be pretty selective in the cases they take--namely, they take cases that they think will be the best vehicles for the causes they are trying to promote. This is good and worthwhile work, but it leaves people in all the other cases out in the cold. NCLR certainly doesn't take every single thing that comes their way, but their scope is amazingly broad, and they tend to focus more on fighting the fights that need to be fought, rather than those that they want to fight.

I knew going into this process, though, that whatever organization I ended up with would be doing good work. What was more of an amazing surprise for me is that the attorney I'll be working with is transgendered, which is simply amazing beyond words. Nonconformity is not a hugely common characteristic in the legal world, and while the public interest sector is not quite so unforgiving as traditional law firms, the interviewing process was not something I was looking forward to. Then, lo and behold, I'm going in for my first interview, and I'm sitting across the table from a trans lawyer. It was amazing on so many levels. The most obvious was the sense of freedom and relief, knowing that this person would truly be interviewing me, not wondering why I didn't have makeup, why I looked like a 12-year-old boy, why he was interviewing some weird woman in a man's suit. He would see and evaluate me, actually me, not my lack of panty hose. There was also an amazing sense of self validation. I was looking at someone I could identify with, who was in a position I wanted to be in. It was proof positive that it is possible, it can happen.

So that's the summer part of things. It dovetailed nicely with the other half of my recent relief - I got the phone call offering the NCLR position while I was on a train heading to San Francisco two weekends ago with LT. Thanks to cancelled class giving me last Friday off, and Presidents Day giving me Monday off, I had a nice four-day weekend to relax, with no memo due upon my return. LT similarly had Monday off, so she took a vacation day on Friday and we hit the road. Er, we hit the rail. It was really a great weekend, and offered a chance for LT and I to just relax and be together, which we really didn't have a chance to do during the semester break.

As somewhat of a mass transit junkie, it was pretty spectacular. We took Amtrak up there, and spent the weekend wandering pretty much all over the Bay area by transit, from Palo Alto to various parts of San Fran, out to Berkeley, and then back on Amtrak to head back south. We got to sleep a lot almost every night. I got to have some weather and rain (a lot of rain, actually), which I have missed horribly. We got to see a number of LT's friends, all very awesome people. We ate some amazing food - I highly recommend Tartine in the Mission for pastries and coffee, Sausage Factory in the Castro for good Italian (insert gay boy joke here), Celtic Cafe near City Hall, and Barney's in Berkeley for great burgers. Oh, and any running and coffee aficionados should check out Zombie Runner in Palo Alto. I didn't have the coffee there, but one of LT's friends works there and I can attest that the owner is obsessed with having everything they do be the highest quality, so I'm sure it's as good as the store is cool (and the store is pretty damn cool). They have a website, too...though I guess that won't help if what you want is the coffee.

It was my first time up in that area, and I found it to be pretty amazing, and definitely a good bit more in line with my heart than LA is. I've never seen so many bikers and people walking dogs, and types of mass transit all in one place! Oh, and most amazing to me, on Sunday we happened to be near the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, and saw a veritable mob of people waiting to get in. We heard one passerby tell their friend that they were at capacity, and wouldn't be admitting people for at least a few hours. We asked someone what was going on that it was so crowded, assuming that there was a special exhibit opening or something. But no, there was no special exhibit. A lot of people in San Francisco just decided that on this random rainy Sunday, they should go to the museum. As a lifelong nerd, this made my heart spectacularly happy.

Oh, and HILLS!! Hooray HILLS!!!! No, not the old defunct department store chain. Living in a hilly area, amazing views, fun topography. I know LA has the surrounding mountains, but let's face it--the parts where everything is are pretty much flat flat flat. And I really don't like flat places so much. Hills are just better.

Rain, Rain

I'm sitting up in the Tower Reading Room in the library, in a work cubby thing next to a window, listening to and watching a pretty decent rain storm. I can't quite tell if the rain is making me peaceful or a bit melancholy, or maybe it's just putting me into a slower pace, which can lead to a bit of both. Certainly, it's hearkening me back to pre-California times in my life, where sitting and listening to rain was a much more common event than it is out here. And that is certainly an occurence that has upsides and downsides.

The semester has been spectacularly insane. I would say that it's all I can do to keep my head above water, except I don't feel like I am keeping my head above water. In order for me to do everything that school requires right now, I feel like I would have to quite literally cut out ALL non-essential school things...and I just can't do that. So, I'm doing what I can.

Readings have been much heavier this semester than last, and the pace of our legal writing skills papers has been much more brisk. On top of that we're in the midst of job searches for the summer, which is simultaneously exciting, excruciating, stressful, exhilerating, but most of all time consuming. I have four interviews on Saturday (yes, FOUR), and really hope that one of them pans out sooner rather than later, so I can relax on that end. Plus there are scholarships and financial aid for next year to apply for (ugh, FAFSA), and the extra-curricular activities certainly don't cease to exist at this time of year. Extra-curricular, yes. Non-essential to my happiness with law school? Absolutely not.

And I think I'm dating someone, too. I seem to recall this.

That's not to say that things are all bad. Busy? Yes. Stressful? Yes. Constant guilt for all the friends and family that I've not been keeping up correspondence with? Yes. Overloaded brain to the point of becoming stupid in some regards? Yes. But also fulfilled, excited, and still absolutely positive that I made the right choice.

Case in point, the summer job search. Applying to all these different organizations just kicks my brain into high gear at the thought of the myriad worthwhile, positive work I will get to do. It's somewhat anxiety-inducing when I'm thinking of a few certain organizations that I really want to get a position at, but even if those at the top of my list don't pan out, the total picture is like a do-gooder's buffet. I'm extremely confident that no matter what organization I end up at, it will be fulfilling and amazing.

Certainly, way more so than my old basement cube. I might miss the 'Burgh, but not that particular piece of the 'Burgh.