I know that this picture has already been showcased on our blog, but it’s one of my favorites. Since my mother denied it placement on our family Christmas card, I figured it could use a little more showcasing in order to soothe its ego. Please excuse my self-indulgence.
I am grateful for a husband who provides. (So I don’t have to.)
Well, he doesn’t provide now. But he will. Some day. He will (hopefully) provide much more than I ever could with my degree in education, which is a relief because I’ve decided that I don’t much like being a breadwinner. Nor am I any good at it. I will happily pass on that role to my husband and continue cleaning the kitchen and sweeping the floors, because, honestly, no one demands that I sweep the floors and clean the kitchen for eight hours straight, five days a week. And that, my friends, makes all the difference.
When I married Scott I always felt confident in the fact that he would take care of us. Money would never be an issue (that is once one of us has a full time job again) because he would provide. My confidence in Scott has been reaffirmed with our recent job hunt.
It seems that ever since we’ve been married I’ve been on a perpetual job hunt. This has further solidified my desire to sweep floors—no one requires a resume, interview, or drug test before you’re allowed to clean your own house. I worked through college. Sought a job after graduation. Spent one glorious year teaching in my dream position. Resigned in order to move to Columbus. Searched frantically to find a job during the summer. Became even more frantic upon arriving in Columbus without a job. Accepted a job with grave reservations. Changed positions halfway through the year. Spent another summer searching once more for a new job. As it is, I currently work in four—yes, that’s four—different jobs. Needless to say, I’m a little sick of hunting for jobs.
With the close of summer, the threat of finding a summer law internship hung over every second year students’ head. You see, summer internships most often lead to a full-time position after graduation. It’s a big deal. A very big deal. I was lucky enough to help Scott hunt for a job. He earned the grades, filled in the resume, and wrote the cover letter (with some editing help from yours truly), but it became my task to compile addresses, print, collate, and mail some one-hundred plus letters of interest to law firms across the nation. I stacked them neatly into our mailbox and breathed a sigh of relief.
Well, it was a short sigh; Scott still had yet to be offered a position.
Over the course of the next month and a half, we were met every day with about seven to eight rejection letters. Little white envelopes chiseled slowly away at our hopes of landing a fantastic job. These were counterbalanced with a few sporadic phone calls and e-mails requesting in-person or phone interviews. All in all, Scott traveled to seven different locations. At each firm he spent a day interviewing with numerous partners, meeting with each one for thirty or so minutes.
As our hopes grew, so did our disappointment. We started to receive the rejection letters from those firms he had already interviewed with. Out of the hundreds we applied to, only one firm—Cox, Smith, Matthews—in San Antonio offered Scott a summer position. This was a position to celebrate; it is the firm Scott was most anxious to work for. They offer the benefits Scott wants, the family life we desire, the salary that makes us sing, and the type of law Scott wants to practice.
While we were happy to accept Cox, Smith’s offer in September, it’s only now that we’ve come to understand how truly fortunate we are. The economy is driving the legal hiring process into the ground. No one—and I mean no one—is receiving offers. In Scott’s class of 200 students, only 25 have currently been offered a position. It is unprecedented to have so few offers. Many of those 25 students, grateful to have any offer, have accepted less than their ideal position. Scott, however, has exactly what he wanted at a very reputable firm.
The thought of our fortune is enough to make me overlook the fact that San Antonio offers little in terms of travel opportunities or changing seasons—at least for now. I’m just glad it was Scott on the job trail and not me. With my track record, he’d have four random, unofficial jobs, but nothing solid. Good thing I’m not the one providing for us over the long haul.
