Amy, 3L

Just when things were starting to settle into a routine again, they get shaken up! Not that I'm complaining, it's just the way things go at Northeastern. A full course load, the Master's project, and a 20-hour per week job don't leave a lot of extra time, but it's doable. I even managed to spend time with friends this weekend.

In all that free time, now I have to find time to go through the co-op interview process. (I got three so far!) It's a very fast process. When you get an interview request, you only get 24 hours to call and schedule the interview. If you get a co-op offer, then you have 3 days to accept or decline the job. Yes, there's a time crunch, but I'm all for making this anxious "will I, won't I get the call" period as short as possible. I'm presented with a choice between a paid co-op with mildly interesting work and unpaid ones that sound amazing. Some people find those two things together, it is possible. I'll let you know if I get any offers from these interviews (three of them in three days).

I've also begun spending working at my ALE placement. It's great to be in an office where people passionately love and believe in what they do! (It's also great to get some perspective and real world experience in the middle of an academic quarter!)

Time to go iron my suits and brush up on my interview skills....

Posted by Amy at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the craziest things about shifting my mindset back to NUSL is the co-op application process. The timeline's pretty tight; applications are due two weeks into the summer quarter. We turned in the applications on Monday, so now it's just a waiting game. I ended up applying to a couple of firms and some government offices as well as a non-profit juvenile justice agency. Interviews and offers start coming in next week, so we'll see.

In other news, I finally got approval from the Tufts Institutional Review Board for my thesis-equivalent project. So now we jump right in and see what happens...with any luck I'll have a product in a few months!

I will say, I'm really not liking this "being in school during the summer" thing. It's wonderful to be back at NUSL, but I'm used to summers being more relaxed, not having to worry about doing 75 pages of reading for the next day. The good news is that quarters are short and we're 1/4 of the way there already.

Posted by Amy at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm finally back at NUSL! I can't tell you how nice it is to be back. I've honestly missed reading cases and debating legal policy. (I'm aware of how sick this sounds.) There's been some reverse culture shock, I won't lie. The paperwork and administrative junk we've had to go through coming back from Tufts hasn't been fun, but I'm hoping that's mostly done now. Emphasis on "hoping."

As far as Tufts goes, we're all done with classes over there except for our thesis-like project. That's been a headache and a half to get approved, but I'm almost there (I think). I'm anxious to start with the project itself, get into the work and get my hands dirty, so to speak. I'll be conducting interviews with court personnel (judges, probation officers, attorneys) to evaluate a mental health promotion program in the juvenile courts.

One of the downsides of the JD/MPH program is that I've had to switch rotations, so I'm now in summer school. I've never done a summer quarter with classes, so this should be interesting. So far it's ok, but as the 4th of July and other summer events get closer, I think I'm going to really miss the freedom of summer co-op. I'm taking Evidence, Juvenile Courts, and Administrative Law, along with the MPH project and a part-time job. So much for relaxing. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. I think the 11-week quarters will fly by a little faster than the semesters did. OK, back to reading juvenile death penalty cases on a beautifully sunny afternoon...

Posted by Amy at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)