First Week of Co-Op at PDS
Hope everyone is having a great start to their summer. Or at least a pleasantly mediocre and uneventful one, if that's what you were looking for.
I just finished my third day at the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia. The first week is all training--really intense training. Everyone at PDS I've met is brilliant (quite intimidatingly so), and extremely approachable and helpful. While most interns are working for one or two attorneys in one division (e.g., Trial Division, Community Defender Division, Parole Division), I am actually one of two interns working for both the Trial Division and the Appeals Division. Today, us interns working in the Appeals Division skipped out on one training session (with approval, don't worry) to attend oral arguments in the DC Court of Appeals.
Monday we officially start working and I expect it to be immensely intense, and am really looking forward to it. As they should, PDS seems to approach work and work product as "how dare you bring me anything less than your very best + 10." I appreciate that spartan regimen, especially as our day in and day out work is a matter of someone's liberty.
Otherwise, I had a nice vacation with my fiancee. We celebrated her birthday, visited my family in North Carolina (via roadtrip), then settled into my place in Virginia. Visiting my family was great. Plus, it was a nice break from law school before I dove straight into my internship. Outside of working I'm spending time researching and preparing to apply for clerkships, reading books I've been trying to finish around law studies, having intriguing philosophical and political conversations with my five roommates, exercising (yay for law school not getting in the way), and longingly missing my loved one and friends.
More to come...