Evolution Chapter One: Jump out of a plane and sue?

Two Reasons to Go to College . . .

You go to college to learn a specific marketable skill.  Engineering. Law. Teaching.  You finish your degree, and go out into the world to do something with a pre-defined elevator speech.  Not a bad choice.  Typically this has a decent return on investment (except maybe teaching) and often it takes more than just four years to get to the real earning points, but it at least lets you earn a living.

The other reason is because it’s just what you do after high school.

I was on the latter path.

Cum Laude Sheepskin

I had a deep and abiding passion for reading and writing, so English was an easy choice for a major. I was (and am still) curious about what makes people tick, so Psychology was a clear choice for a minor.  But I never have been able to just put my head down and follow the rules for the sake of following the rules, so I opted for a second minor in Fine Arts.  

This last spoiled me for a regular square office job. I ran a number of gigs my junior and senior year, mostly in the theatre.  I’m good with people, even high strung drama queens.  I’m very good at organizing things and data, and building systems to get things done. The stage managers loved me because when they were running around at the five minute call, I would be wrapping up the costume sets for the second act.  Soothing performers who were in high dudgeon.  (Ask me about “David’s missing pants” or “Fernando’s purple shirt” sometime.)

The thing about these gigs — unless you actually blew a deadline, nobody cared when you got the job done.  Nobody cared what you did when you weren’t putting out fires.  I got to know the night shift janitors well because I’d stay late writing papers and doing reading while the laundry ran in the next room.  The next morning, I’d go to classes (or not, performances were generally weekend gigs) or sleep in until it was time to fine-tune the work once more.

Loved it.  I was looking forward to moving out on my own and taking on a real professional job.  In an office.  Doing . . . something.  But just like this, as a grown-up, mistress of my own fate.

Food Stamps — Better to Give Than Receive

I wrangled my way into an entry-level copywriting apprenticeship here in Phoenix.  It was going to be great; a wonderful fit for my interests.  The eighties had been good for the industry, and lots of businesses were looking to hire small firms who were innovative and out of the box.  The big firms on the coasts were viewed as stodgy and boring, as well as expensive.   Then the savings and loan crisis of 1990 hit, and all the advertising money went to big firms on the coasts.  “Stodgy and boring” was now “reliable with a proven track record.”

There I was, in a new city, with a brand new sheepskin but no elevator speech or experience to sell.  I was in a tight spot, so I decided to go work for the government.  I picked up a job determining eligibility for the Food Stamp program.

Your Mother Taught You Never to Ask These Questions

As you can imagine, this job was rule-bound to the nth degree.  It was now my job to ask questions of the applicants, and the questions were the sort one gets trained never to ask.  “Are you pregnant?  Does the father live with you?  How much do the two of you make?”  I got decently good at it, though this was not the kind of skill I really wanted to acquire.  I was good at finding the rules to justify why I was deciding one way or another, and careful about documenting any time I got close to a line in the sand.  I kept up with the changes in program administration, where one day black would be black and white white — then the next day, black was actually white and vice versa.  It was very much like living in Orwell’s 1984 but without the motivational posters.

One day, after I finished a particularly grueling interview to get to the bottom of a customer’s situation, one of my co-workers poked her head over the wall of my cubicle.  “You know, you’d make a really good paralegal,” she said.  “You don’t give up once you get going, and you’re good at the whole policy and procedure thing.”

Jump Out of a Plane and Sue?

“What’s a paralegal?” I asked.  “Is it like a process server?  Jump out of a plane, say ‘Are you Jane Jones?’ and drop a lawsuit on them?”

She laughed.  “No, they help lawyers, but not like a secretary, where all they do is type letters.  Here, my sister’s a bankruptcy lawyer.  Come to dinner Saturday and I’ll introduce you to her.”

I went to dinner that Saturday, and got an introduction the next week to the sister’s lead paralegal.  One brain-picking lunch later, I had a new career path.