competence can be a curse.
🎶 Used to Know Me - Charli XCX (I binged Hacks recently and adored when this song came on)
I know, I know--it's been a terribly long time, and I'm sorry. This career transition has turned out to be a fun exercise in constantly disappointing myself. I somehow expected that I would be a fully optimized working being in light of how optimized a working being I was in the law firm environment, but alas. It might be time for me to admit that I need help, which is something I always struggled with. (As a sixth-year associate, I still mostly did my own administrative tasks. I started getting some talking-tos from partners to stop doing that, but I left the firm before I could implement any meaningful changes on that front. Oops.)
So what have I been doing that has driven me to finally admit that I need help? Well, I obsessed over whether and how I could meaningfully and sensibly have a Patreon (which launched on August 1!), spent three hours alone figuring out music bots on my Discord, and read multiple self-help books (most recently: The Startup of You*) before realizing I still felt directionless and signing up with a career coach who was recommended by a college friend. As it turns out, Cinda Canning (portrayed by Tina Fey) from Only Murders in the Building had it very right when she gave her abused assistant some secondhand advice:
When I was an intern at The Post, Kay Graham gave me a great piece of advice. She said, "Don't be too good at a job you don't want."
sometimes, being great at a job can mean being terrible at your life.
Ever since I can remember, I was obsessed with the idea of doing a capital-G Great job. It didn't matter what the job was. Manning the cash register? I was off by less than $1 in cash reconciliation after handling the midnight release of the last Harry Potter book. Summer consulting gig? I slept under my desk on the final night of my internship, after my supervisor changed all of the parameters of the SQL query I was running. Law firm summer associate? My mom suggested that I go on coffee runs for the partners, and I almost did. (Good thing I didn't.)
I've been in plenty of conversations where we'd joke about work being a pie-eating contest where the prize was more pie, but I haven't been in a lot of discussions about what kinds of pie we should eat. Not all pies are created equal, after all. I adore lemon meringue and pumpkin, but cherry? Ew.
The danger of being Great at something is that inevitably, you will be asked to do more of that something, regardless of your own desire. It's a catch-22 for people who are Type A, overachievers, or people-pleasers. You want to be Great at everything because, well, you have integrity/take pride in your work/are a team player/don't want to let others down/etc. But by being Great at everything, you subjugate your own will to the asks of others. The answer can't lie in just being selectively incompetent, can it?
Sort of. I call it reluctant competence. This is a tactic that can only be employed after you've established that you are Great at everything. Use it too early, and you'll just seem like you don't want to work. (And we can go into anti-capitalism all we want, but put that aside for now. Coming off like you don't want to work in your workplace is a ticket to getting fired and having all of your coworkers hate you. Let's assume that is a suboptimal result.)
Use reluctant competence when you're asked to do something that you don't really want to do and would like to do less of, for some reason or other. Maybe it doesn't align with your future goals; maybe you'd like to try something new; maybe you just plain hate it. Accept the task (if you are able to), do your normal Great job, and after the task is over--so your Great job is at the forefront of everyone's minds--have a check-in with your boss about your work allocation. Mention to them directly that you'd like to do less of A (what you just did) and more of B. And every time thereafter that you are asked to do A, do a Great job, and then mention in the post mortem emails that you appreciate the opportunity to do A and would like to get more exposure to B going forward. Don't let up until you get more of B and less of A. If your workplace values you and your contributions, they should try to take your preferences into account. And if they don't, then it's time to start answering those recruiter emails...
✍️ ask cece
how can i find legal mentors who are also able to help me navigate the path to citizenship in the U.S.?
Q: As an immigrant still on the path to citizenship and a prelaw student, I find it hard to connect with most attorneys and legal advisor-provided mentors because they rarely have resources/advice for students like me. Do you have connections with foreign-born lawyers practicing in the U.S. that could mentor students with a similar immigration background?
- Anonymous
A: The U.S. immigration system can be doozy to navigate! I had plenty of classmates in law school who had to navigate their job recruiting in tandem with immigration, and while it seemed challenging, they successfully managed it with some thought. Unfortunately, a lot of the resources for legal mentorship starts more at the law school stage rather than prior. Your law school will likely have immigration resources for students, and nonprofit networks like the Legal Mentor Network helps pair law students and new attorneys with more seasoned attorneys. (I believe you can even write in special notes when you sign up, so you could flag the immigration issue specifically.) So while you may be struggling to find the right resources right now, rest assured that there will be more resources available to you in the future.
Moreover, there's nothing that you need to do for immigration right now. Most of my non-U.S. citizen classmates began planning their career/immigration strategy during 2L or 3L. If you can, focus your undergraduate years on just exploring whether you want to be a lawyer, putting aside the immigration issue. I promise you that you aren't behind if you punt the immigration research to after you're in law school.