*taps microphone*
Apr. 21st, 2009 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iuliaOkay, just checking that this Dreamwidth thing is on.
I've been absolute pants about posting to LJ in the...god, almost six years since I've had one, so I'm resolving to be better with my shiny Dreamwidth account.
With that being said, I'm going to steal an idea fromkageygirl and tell everyone more than they ever wanted to know what they should know about me.
I was born and raised in Michigan, with a brief year-long sojourn in California when I was six for my dad's job. My hair bleached blond, and I got a kick-ass tan, and it was all downhill from there once I moved back to Michigan *g*
From the earliest I can remember, I had always wanted to be a doctor (a cardiothoracic surgeon, to be precise). I took this future calling pretty seriously, dutifully working on my hand-eye coordination through hours of Nintendo-playing. I had a physiology coloring book, and I bought a medical etymology workbook for fun.
I went to an all-girls Catholic high school which required me to wear a plaid skirt and saddle shoes. While I didn't mind the plaid, you try finding saddle shoes in adult sizes. Kooky nuns are kooky.
I eschewed same-sex education and leapt ecstatically into college at the University of Michigan, where I was pre-med until halfway through my first semester, at which point I almost failed calculus, and realized that perhaps liberal arts might be more fun. I promptly decided to major in history (20th century Britain) and minor in philosophy (moral and political). I took two years of Latin for fun, and deeply regret not starting it right when I got to college. (I suspect that my career might have veered on a grad-school-for-classics course, had that been so.)
Ultimately, I decided that it might be good fun to be a laywer, and I had a fantastic class in my junior year taught by a professor at the law school and run like a first year law class. It was demanding, and terrifying, and I was hooked.
I took a year off in between college and grad school, which was nice for some real-world perspective. And stuff.
I then went to law school at Michigan State University, which was good fun. I am a complete freak, and loved law school. It was a metric assload of work, exhausting and stressful as hell, but I was never happier than when I was reading cases (which is pretty much all that law school is. Second and third year I was a member of the Law Review, and discovered that I have a truly sick love of cite-checking. I was thrilled by horrible citations! I loved having to hunt across the internets to find what the hell the author was referring to and put it into a rigidly defined format!
While in law school, I spent two years working at the local Legal Aid office, and found what I believe is my calling. I helped battered women leave dangerous partners, I kept kids away from abusive parents, I protected tenants from opportunistic slumlords, I gave legal advice to the homeless once a month at the local homeless shelter. It was heartbreaking, horrifying, and the most rewarding work I have ever done in my life. I miss it every day.
After graduating from law school (which was full of pomp--there were bagpipes! and silly hats!), I spent my summer studying for the Illinois bar exam, and then moved to Illinois approximately one week after taking the bar exam. I now live about an hour north of Chicago with my husband, who is in graduate school getting his PhD in clinical psychology.
I work at a small firm (a total of three lawyers including myself) and spend the vast majority of my time doing consumer law, but I've just begun dabbling in bankruptcy, so we'll see how that goes. I would eventually like to work my way back to Legal Aid, but I need to learn Spanish, and the economy being what it is, I'm happy to have a job. Period. Hopefully I can be choosy a bit later in my career.
I'm married to the boy that I met freshman year of college--he lived on the first floor of our dorm. Our first "date" was meeting up in the first floor lounge to watch Star Wars: A New Hope. He is a giant nerd, and a scarily perceptive person. We can have passionate discussions about moral ambiguity on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and spend half an hour quoting entire scenes of The Big Lebowski back and forth. Our living room is decorated, in part, with twelve-inch figures of the Justice League across a couple of bookshelves. We play World of Warcraft together, and kick each other's asses in Super Smash Brothers: Brawl. I love him to itty bits.
I've had my bestest frienddira for half of my life now, and the time Before Dira is hardly worth mulling over much. She's the other half of my brain, and we can't play rock-paper-scissors, because we tie. Every. single. time. Which should tell you something. I'd tell you how much she means to me, and how she's shaped who I've become, but I don't have the words. Words are her department :)
Whew! Okay, so, I didn't even get into my fannish interests, but this is more than I've posted in...a long while, so this will have to do for now.
I've been absolute pants about posting to LJ in the...god, almost six years since I've had one, so I'm resolving to be better with my shiny Dreamwidth account.
With that being said, I'm going to steal an idea from
kageygirl and tell everyone I was born and raised in Michigan, with a brief year-long sojourn in California when I was six for my dad's job. My hair bleached blond, and I got a kick-ass tan, and it was all downhill from there once I moved back to Michigan *g*
From the earliest I can remember, I had always wanted to be a doctor (a cardiothoracic surgeon, to be precise). I took this future calling pretty seriously, dutifully working on my hand-eye coordination through hours of Nintendo-playing. I had a physiology coloring book, and I bought a medical etymology workbook for fun.
I went to an all-girls Catholic high school which required me to wear a plaid skirt and saddle shoes. While I didn't mind the plaid, you try finding saddle shoes in adult sizes. Kooky nuns are kooky.
I eschewed same-sex education and leapt ecstatically into college at the University of Michigan, where I was pre-med until halfway through my first semester, at which point I almost failed calculus, and realized that perhaps liberal arts might be more fun. I promptly decided to major in history (20th century Britain) and minor in philosophy (moral and political). I took two years of Latin for fun, and deeply regret not starting it right when I got to college. (I suspect that my career might have veered on a grad-school-for-classics course, had that been so.)
Ultimately, I decided that it might be good fun to be a laywer, and I had a fantastic class in my junior year taught by a professor at the law school and run like a first year law class. It was demanding, and terrifying, and I was hooked.
I took a year off in between college and grad school, which was nice for some real-world perspective. And stuff.
I then went to law school at Michigan State University, which was good fun. I am a complete freak, and loved law school. It was a metric assload of work, exhausting and stressful as hell, but I was never happier than when I was reading cases (which is pretty much all that law school is. Second and third year I was a member of the Law Review, and discovered that I have a truly sick love of cite-checking. I was thrilled by horrible citations! I loved having to hunt across the internets to find what the hell the author was referring to and put it into a rigidly defined format!
While in law school, I spent two years working at the local Legal Aid office, and found what I believe is my calling. I helped battered women leave dangerous partners, I kept kids away from abusive parents, I protected tenants from opportunistic slumlords, I gave legal advice to the homeless once a month at the local homeless shelter. It was heartbreaking, horrifying, and the most rewarding work I have ever done in my life. I miss it every day.
After graduating from law school (which was full of pomp--there were bagpipes! and silly hats!), I spent my summer studying for the Illinois bar exam, and then moved to Illinois approximately one week after taking the bar exam. I now live about an hour north of Chicago with my husband, who is in graduate school getting his PhD in clinical psychology.
I work at a small firm (a total of three lawyers including myself) and spend the vast majority of my time doing consumer law, but I've just begun dabbling in bankruptcy, so we'll see how that goes. I would eventually like to work my way back to Legal Aid, but I need to learn Spanish, and the economy being what it is, I'm happy to have a job. Period. Hopefully I can be choosy a bit later in my career.
I'm married to the boy that I met freshman year of college--he lived on the first floor of our dorm. Our first "date" was meeting up in the first floor lounge to watch Star Wars: A New Hope. He is a giant nerd, and a scarily perceptive person. We can have passionate discussions about moral ambiguity on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and spend half an hour quoting entire scenes of The Big Lebowski back and forth. Our living room is decorated, in part, with twelve-inch figures of the Justice League across a couple of bookshelves. We play World of Warcraft together, and kick each other's asses in Super Smash Brothers: Brawl. I love him to itty bits.
I've had my bestest friend
dira for half of my life now, and the time Before Dira is hardly worth mulling over much. She's the other half of my brain, and we can't play rock-paper-scissors, because we tie. Every. single. time. Which should tell you something. I'd tell you how much she means to me, and how she's shaped who I've become, but I don't have the words. Words are her department :)Whew! Okay, so, I didn't even get into my fannish interests, but this is more than I've posted in...a long while, so this will have to do for now.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-22 01:22 am (UTC)I mean. Hi! Welcome! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-22 01:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-22 01:34 am (UTC)Yaaaaay!!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-22 01:48 am (UTC)