I rarely awake before 11 on weekends. I think this is for 2 primary reasons: 1) I do not have kids yet, and thus have this need (after talking to my friends with children) to really "stock up" on some magical shut-eye, and 2) I always feel like the law school gods owe me for a ridiculous week. However, there is one small (well, medium) problem in this equation: the dog. Despite my best attempts, it seems as though she is completely seeking to suck the joy out of my saturday mornings unable to hold it for 10 or so hours. Because dear husband is, well, a dear husband - he usually embarks on the freezing morning walk - allowing me to remain cuddled under flannel sheets - the hum of a leaf or snowblower in the background. However, today I took the "high road" and took the dog for a walk (in sleet, no less) and came back, slightly invigorated by the freeze your butt off refreshing weather - and decided to check my email.

Let me preface by saying that I deliberately subscribe to group emails that offer me reasons to get steaming irrationally angry think. They often annoy me - but I release a lot of rage in my reply posts - and it allows me to practice mixing anger with professionalism. And, let's face it, every lawyer needs to know how to do that. However, today I received an email from a law school cohort about the dreaded unpaid internship fiasco. Anyone in law school (and perhaps anyone in college) can attest to the fact that a lot, if not all of the internships one may be interested in are unpaid. I've convinced myself that this is acceptable because of the illustrious "experience" that one stands to gain and have sought to reject the notion that it's just ok because we were all served the same batch of Kool-Aid from our career services departments. Imagine my distaste then - when said cohort directed me to read this. For those not interested in the article in its entirety, I will highlight my favorite parts:

"Now, gratitude is a virtuous emotion, said to relieve stress and make you happier. So, by all means, be thankful for your cat, your curly hair or your kid’s decision to leave home. But gratitude can be misplaced. I used to tell the trainees that whether you are stuffing tacos or writing deathless prose, no one is doing you a favor by hiring you."

"The best place to get job experience, I replied, is on a job, the essence of which is the exchange of responsibility for compensation. Take away the latter half of the equation and what’s left is volunteerism. Fine: Pitch in at a soup kitchen. But there’s a word for unpaid labor for someone else’s profit, undertaken under duress (like today’s economy) or false pretenses. That word is slavery." (emphasis added).

Not sure what the take-home message should be. Paid job or no job? Waitressing over law, at any cost to my resume? Not to mention, if this is the concern with *summer* internships, how does one ever justify a semester in practice - wherein the poor virtue-filled law student works for free while ALSO paying tuition? Not to bring out my engineering math skills - but such an arrangement (paying $20/hr or so for the "privilege" of working) means that the hit I took for my deviation from established career path (engineer turned one-day lawyer) will result in me losing much more than I originally thought. To me, this means one thing. For any arrangement where you are either unpaid or (even worse) are paying to work, the job should be your DREAM job. I will sell out to work for a place that I dreamed about to get me through law school applications - but I will never again happily accept a job that doesn't work for me as much as I freely work for it. Perhaps this is due to my "cost benefit analysis" education - or, even more simply, a matter of common sense.