yet another of my former english department colleagues who left english for law is graduating this month. sometimes i feel a sense of loss, because i remember them as colleagues, as scholars and critics, and that meant something where we were coming from, because adequate, competent scholars are a dime a dozen but people doing really interesting, unusual work at this level of scholarship was something else altogether. and of course, in a way the sense of loss is for my own former career, for it’s obvious i’m always pining to go back to research and literature.but i also feel joy and pride for them, because those who switched into law have all gone into public interest law, and seem to be burning with a kind of moral conviction about their work that i admire and did not see in them when we were merely departmental colleagues.
some of it has to do with liberal guilt (which i have in enormous bucketloads) and privilege (and we know exactly what that word means) — because after raffles and harvard and now law school — all my life i’ve had all the advantages of education and social networks and doors opening automatically — it is unthinkable that we sit on that and do nothing. because when i was an academic, scholarship is in and of itself the point, for that was one’s vocation and avocation. at least the fiction you tell yourself is that your field chooses you, not the other way round. but if i leave academia and actually choose a ‘real world’ career, and am choosing to do something (rather than being chosen,) then i better damn well choose to do something useful to other people.
[and yes the liberal guilt is all too evident. yesterday yt said, looking at my cv, you’re in asia, but instead of putting education somewhere prominent you hide it at the very end and the font you use for harvard is the smallest in the whole cv: you must be one of those people who when asked where you went to school say “boston.” (he’s right. i always do mumble “in the boston area.“)
as i try to write my job applications my greatest difficulty is finding the right firms to apply to. where i want to be was never in doubt: if we had a public defender’s office, i’d be all set. but we don’t, and so how i’m getting there is in some doubt. those wishing to go into civil work or corporate practice can apply to any firm: that is the bread and butter of all firms… but if i want even a chance of being properly trained in criminal defence work i really have to get myself into a firm with at least one established, experienced full-time defence lawyer who — here is the catch — also has enough work for both of us. it’s not simply that there are so few criminal lawyers in singapore, but trainees and associates don’t get to pick and choose: you work on the cases you are given. i know far too many people who set out wanting to practice one kind of law and end up their whole lives doing something else instead because that was the only work available when they started out. and those aren’t even people who want to do anything as low-demand (from the employer’s point of view) as criminal work, let alone in the current hiring climate.
i’m not whinging about this: i accept that this is the reality, that jobs are hard to come by especially if you’re looking at unpopular fields. i feel a little despondent sometimes as i write my job apps. but other times i try to take courage from my former english colleagues — it’s far harder than i expected, but there must be some way to get where i mean to go, even if it isn’t the fastest route.
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