[panties + law school]

I recently started working again. Now hold on--it's not a full-time, permanent job. It's a parttime sales job in the same shopping center that I've held almost every single retail job I've ever worked at it since I  turned 16. I haven't worked at this specific store before though.

The truth is, it's kind of perfect.

This summer I'll be taking the Bar.

And the Foreign Service exam (again).

And definitively proving to the world that I am a little glutton for punishment.

With all of that going on, a full-time job just doesn't seem like a good idea.

Yesterday was try-on day for me at work. A part of my job requirement is to try on all the merchandise (such hardship I suffer for the sake of my job) in order to properly recommend products to our customers. The company I work for sells, ahem, "unmentionables" so coming out and giving my review of each product to my manager and coworker was a fun process. Many of our products don't actually fit either of them so they depend on their coworkers' reviews to know how each product fits. Don't worry, I got to review everything as we were re-shelving the items, not while I was actually trying them on. Something tells me that I'm going to be getting very comfortable talking about these things in very short order. General consensus around the store is that after you work there for a while, you become able to eyeball a woman's size without ever touching a measuring tape.

Surprisingly my legal education has come in handy so far. I worked retail back in college and high school and I was always a little uncomfortable with the actual selling part of the job. I tended to be timid with customers, hesitating to recommend products or add-on to sales.

On my second day of training (my third day at the store--the first was spent filling out tax forms), I ended up on the sales floor for a little bit. I was supposed to be training with my manager but we were so busy that I ended up sort of jumping in to the fray.

Thanks to law school, the only thing that made me timid was the fact that I was still learning the products. I didn't really know the difference between different styles. I calmly made a mental note to do my research and learn the products. All the old timidness was gone completely.

Law school will do that to you. First it will steal your confidence. Then it will build it right back up to a much stronger level than it ever was before. More than anything, law school teaches you how to think. Law school, contrary to popular belief, does not teach you the laws or how to be a lawyer in the way that med school teaches you how to be a doctor. No, law school simply teaches you how to think like a lawyer, where to look for the information, how to apply that information, and finally, how to communicate your findings. Useful skills for any profession, honestly, but that's a topic for another day.

I may be employed selling briefs instead of writing them (that just happened. deal with it.) but I'm still putting my legal education to good use. I think.