often there’s no other way but gritting one’s teeth and getting on with what needs to be done as best as possible and as quickly as possible — and try and ride out the inevitable trouble from the inevitable mistakes and angry people — and hope this is just a bad patch — so much of it isn’t just the workload, or being burnt out (which of course by this time most people would be…), but also some switch in me that is flipped and stuck on Can’t instead of Can. and perhaps i will lose my job — i feel i’ve come so close to it in the last days, or am setting myself up for it this week if nothing is done, or not quickly enough. the US is an anomaly among common law countries not to require any clinical or practical training before admission to the bar (and one thinks there is something the matter with that) but sometimes i wish that passing the bar exams alone would be qualification enough here. the sleep debt from 2am nights after 2am nights and the fear of not being allowed to qualify that weighs on everyone — everything is in the balance right now — this close to getting called and anything can happen now to jeopardise that. not just the last six months, but the last five years would be completely wasted. once I am qualified, things would be different in one respect — in one’s heart of hearts, one would know that the bottom line is that losing one job however traumatic would be like losing any other job — because then it is only matter of reevaluating your problems, your life, learning what mistakes you’ve made from the last, finding another employer, another job, starting over. but i would always be able to work in the field — and short of being disbarred, they could never take that qualification away from us. and that gives you baseline security — you could even leave the profession for a few years — and come back when you like so long as you’ve renewed your licence — but to be in limbo for 9 months — to both be expected too much and too little of — that places one in a peculiarly vulnerable position.
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