Accurate impressions

On my to-do list: All manner of household chores, exercise, make various phone calls, write thank you notes, pay bills, shower. (I have a newborn. Showering is on my to-do list, and it doesn't always get done.)

What I'm doing instead while the baby naps: Reading some of my old blog posts from 1L year. I came across a roundup of some OCS presentations I had attended recently, including one on corporate law. I summed up my impression of corporate law thusly:

"Late nights doing boring stuff."

So now I know those OCS presentations were worth attending.

Here's another 1L impression, also based on an OCS presentation:

Tonight I went to a panel about large firms. The takeaway message for me was that I probably can't work at one. I don't want to wait until I'm in my late thirties to have kids, and the part time option doesn't seem like it works. As much as I dislike most of David Brooks's ideas, maybe he's right about one thing: you can't raise a family and work full time, at least not without some serious help. And I hate the idea of paying someone else to raise my kids. Maybe in my thirties, I should focus on my family, and in my forties I can start devoting serious time to my career.

My parents made it work, with lots of help from their friends and my grandmother. But they had regular, predictable schedules. Tonight I kept hearing how you're expected to check your Blackberry constantly, and how you have to cancel your plans at the last minute because a partner has just dropped something on your desk. If you have a three-year old waiting for you, you can't just announce that you're not coming home. I don't want to be that type of parent.

I'm not sure how to respond to this. Maybe the reality of having a family and working at a large firm is different than I thought it would be. Or maybe I don't want to acknowledge that I was right, and I chose differently than I expected to five years ago.