Being a new paralegal is extremely frustrating. Being a paralegal in general has been refered to as "perpetual frustration" by lawyers who used to be paralegals. Right now, I'm working at a very small office. My attorney has a lot of patience for me, thank goodness. Right now, I'm writing an article for the SVC Paralegal newsletter that I'm in charge of. Writing this article has made me realize that while the trek may be difficult right now, it will eventually be extremely rewarding. Here's the article, in it's first draft--you'll have to get the newsletter to see the final product:
At this years Second Annual paralegal luncheon, Skagit Valley Paralegal Program students were privileged to hear from Stacy Unquist and her journey through the program and into her career as a paralegal. Stacy emphasized that while the journey was never easy, it was always rewarding.
In small towns with small firms, it is not uncommon to have one paralegal for every two lawyers—some lawyers practice without a paralegal. Some lawyers only have one secretary to manage the phones, schedules, and bills. The small volume of clients that the firm deals with allows the attorney to be incredibly self-sufficient. Not only do they know the ins and outs of the law, but they also can have addresses, phone numbers, and even client birthdates memorized. A new paralegal working at such an office can expect to have to ‘prove’ not only their personal skills, but the value of having a paralegal as well.
The task is daunting. In larger offices, it may not be so bad—the attorney may have a wide array of support staff and has realized the benefits of having a paralegal. A new paralegal in a large office only has to prove his or her skills, and not skills of paralegals around the world. Within a large office, paralegals compete among each other for promotions, overtime, or autonomy in general. In a smaller office, the lonesome paralegal competes against his or her boss—the attorney—for that chance to shine.
Like any career, in order to be proficient in what you do, starting from the bottom and working up to the top has its value. In larger firms, like Perkins-Coie in Seattle, a brand new paralegal would likely start off in the records department taking care of file organization. In a smaller office, filing, answering the phones, and drafting plain and generic pleadings such as Notices of Appearance would be some of the main functions of a new paralegal—well before interviews, intakes, or declarations become part of the daily routine.
As simple as the ‘rookie’ tasks may seem, everyone is bound to make mistakes. The learning curve is long and difficult. However, the consensus from experienced paralegals seems to be that the more days go by, the easier learning becomes. After the initial learning curve has passed, law office efficiency and actual paralegal expertise increases exponentially. Getting past the learning curve is different and difficult for everyone, regardless of how many classes one has taken as a paralegal. However, the rate at which one excels as a paralegal after the learning curve is directly related to the knowledge and training one has received as a paralegal. In the Skagit Valley Paralegal Program, students skip the lessons that can only be learned at work. This is why everyone is required to do an internship—these lessons can only be learned on the job. However, after the learning curve is passed, students can more effectively apply what they’ve learned in class—interviewing, investigating, legal research, drafting briefs, etc. Taking ABA approved classes will help paralegals become professionals at a much higher rate.
Stacy was a waitress, and had been out of school for nine years before she decided to go back to Skagit Valley College and get her Paralegal degree. Now, she works for a successful local law firm and can be seen presenting orders ex parte in open court.
John McCain is not as charismatic, young, or as conservative as I'd like, but he is smart. And he does kick butt. And he's not a panzy. I cannot wait for a debate between McCain and Obama.
My favorite part about this video is when McCain quotes Obama to embarress him. Oh, and also when he points out that Obama would more readily meet with Ahmedinejad than General Patraeus. But then again, I also loved when McCain pointed out that Obama is in charge of the sub-committee that is responsible for holding progress hearings on Afghanistan, but has not called for a single meeting thus far.
I went to a new doctor today--that means I had to fill out a lot of "new patient information" sheets. One of the papers made me disclose everything and anything about my past medical history. It asked questions like "Have you ever had a urinary tract infection?" "Are you sexually active?" "Do you do recreational drugs?" All of these, of course, were easy to answer. Of course, these are questions you are expected to hear from a doctor's office--otherwise, what kind of an office would it be? They deserve full disclosure, I didn't hide anything from them. If I did, they wouldn't be able to give me the proper treatment! Finally, I got to the end, and the very last question was: "What are your personal goals?" I gasped and cringed. How intrusive! Alas, I couldn't leave it blank! I thought about it, was shocked that I didn't have an immediate answer, and then wrote: To be extremely successful and wealthy.
The older I get, the more and more I realize how much money leads to progress. I'm not going to go as far as to say that money leads to happiness (read: money leads to happiness), but I am going to propose that the more money someone (me) has, the more potential they have to -do- more in their life, and the more 'things' a person can do in their life, the more happy he/she (I) will be.
So far in my life, I have gained enough experience and social capital that enable me to have many different avenues to pursue wealth. Let me explain what I mean by this. A female who isn't very smart, has been in and out of the prison system, and dropped out of high school, has few options to acquire wealth--waitressing, stripping, or marrying someone rich. She could be successful in one or all, but the chances of her being a failure in all of these endeavors is still very great. The point is, in this situation she only has 3 obvious avenues of potential wealth. If she wanted to open up more avenues, she could go to a community college, graduate with good grades, etc. It would be hard, but at least by doing so she would open up a couple more avenues.
Like I said, my current situation, I have many avenues to pursue. This summer, I'm going to need to start making a lot of money. Here is an incomplete list of things I can do to make money:
I can see myself doing those things for an indefinite amount of time. I could be content, safe, and happy. The following list is a list of dreams pursuits. Ultimately, I would like to start my own business. Again, I have a variety of different ideas.
-My own reality TV show franchise (don't judge, I have some good ideas!) -A rehabilitation center (not just any rehab center, no, this one will include legal help and an mixed-martial-arts club.) -My own law firm (I'd have to go to law school, which is fine) -My own HR firm (I could probably do this now...but I need some $$. Also, it might be boring.)
If this blog entry was placed in my self-titled autobiography, it would be under Part V: Acquiring Wealth, Chapter One: The Great Decision.
Ideally, Part V would end with something like, "I realized that I could write an honest check for a large NASA spacecraft and not even sweat it."
**Disclaimer! This post is my political rant of the week. I'm going to lay out my disdain for Barack Obama and the "left" in general. So you know, read at your own risk. And as a qualifier, I don't hate people that are liberal, I just don't agree at all with their political belief system. I happen to have many liberal friends that I admire and associate with on a regular basis. However, this topic causes me to verbalize myself in a hateful manner. Just don't take it personally.**
Fortunately, since I'm not the greatest at expressing my thoughts and ideas, I've found other people who can get the point across a lot quicker than I can.
Thomas Sowell "No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president...The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached."
Some people, such as John Kerry, are only voting for Obama strictly because he is black (but remember how he is technically only half black?)
Good reasoning, Senator!
Barack the Communist
Obama wants to give us free health care, benefits up the ying yang, lower gas, free school, free food, hope, change, passion, etc. He's so very moving, you know.
Thomas Jefferson once said, "the government that has the power to give you everything you want also has the power to take everything you have from you."
But you know, good ole' Barack only cares about the safety and well-being of everyone. He wants everyone to be happy and flourish! And when he talks, you know, don't you get that tingling feeling in your leg? Last week in Portland, Barack attracted the largest crowd he's ever drawn. All to say this:
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."
Wait, since when do I care what other countries think? Since when does America start taking orders from "other countries." Was it sometime after no one helped us with Katrina, or before we gave millions of dollars in food and aid to all the other foreign natural disasters in a time of war (a war in which few countries are helping us with.) And speaking of that war, why do we have to follow UN regs anyways? Did you know our soldiers can't shoot unless their being shot upon? Look at what that's costing us.
And people complain that the Patriot Act (it's stopped a few major terror threats since it's been enacted) and FICA (let's the CIA, without a warrant, listen in on phone calls between foreign countries that are merely -routed- through the US) are unconstitutional. This is straight up liberty theft.
We're America, I think we deserve our liberty and our sovereignty, Mr. Obama.
Barack the Baby Killer
I know there are medical reasons for getting an abortion. In fact, there are 2 medical reasons for getting an abortion. One is a very rare condition in which the fetus (which by the way, means ’little child’ in Latin) grows outside of the womb, like in the falopian tube. Obviously the baby cannot grow or survive there. The body normally would do an -’auto’ abort, but the fetus would still have to be removed from the tube, so as not to mess up a woman’s reproductive organs. The second medical reason for an abortion is easier to predict, easier to identify, and easier to take care of. It basically entails the mother having extremely high blood pressure during pregnancy. Basically, unless it is taken care of in the first trimester, the mother is screwed. If she does a late abortion, or a partial birth abortion, she is just as much at risk as she would be if she just had a c-section.
So here’s the thing: while there are TWO reasons to have a 1st trimester abortion, there is NO REASON to have a 2nd or 3rd trimester abortion. If there is a ’malfunction’ in the productive stages of a pregnancy, your body will naturally cause you to have a miscarriage. This could potentially happen as late as the 2nd or 3rd trimester.
Now why am I so anti 2nd and 3rd Trimester abortion, you ask? Because it is literally murder. There is no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. A common procedure performed at 8 months (mind you, many children are born healthy at 8 months) is being widely accepted these days, and it disgusts me. It’s called Incision D & E. The D and E stand for Dilation and Extraction. Look it up. You’re lazy, so I’ll tell you. The doctor dilates your cervix, which is a common thing to do, helps people birth faster, but instead of popping the baby out, they instead stick a knife up into the baby’s brain , scrape the brain out, and then vacuum the baby out into a garbage sack. Why is this legal? Hey, it’s the woman’s body, right? I mean, if she doesn’t want to be pregnant for another month, why should she, right? By the way, Obama is pro partial birth abortion, which uses exactly the means in which I just described. Oh, also, he voted against legislation that would allow doctors to try to save the life of a surviving child of a botched abortion.
Barack the Liar
Obama likes to twist words and flip flop his stance according to the latest research and polls, NOT from actual experience or anything.
For example: "If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."
5 days later: "Iran is a grave threat. It has an illicit nuclear program. It supports terrorism across the region and militias in Iraq. It threatens Israel's existence. It denies the Holocaust."
Funny, because just after that, President Bush said the following:
"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
And now Obama is back to saying that talks really do work. But this isn't the only topic that Obama likes to twist.
On our Iraq timeline, McCain said we'd be there for: "Maybe a hundred [years]. We've been in South Korea. We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That'd be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it's fine with me."
Obama, spewing with "rank falsehood," then made several statements like this:
“[McCain] is basically running for a third Bush term. He wants to continue this war in Iraq maybe for another 100 years."
* Rabidly anti-Israel Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. The Obamas were regular dinner guests at Khalidi’s Hyde Park home for years.
* Terrorist sympathizer Ali Abunimah, who runs the viciously anti-Israel web site Electronic Intifada.
* Unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.
* Reverend Jeremiah Wright. What more needs to be said?
* Anti-Israel foreign policy adviser Samantha Power — fired after calling Hillary Clinton a “monster.”
* Anti-Israel foreign policy adviser Robert Malley — fired when it was revealed he has been holding talks with Hamas.
* Hatem El-Hady, former official of the Hamas-linked charity Kindhearts, closed by the Justice Department. El-Hady’s web page—with Michelle Obama listed as an opt-in “friend”—suddenly vanished from the Obama campaign site with no explanation, after being exposed by LGF and others.
Did I mention that not only does Obama support Hamas, but Hamas supports Obama!
"Well, on the very day President Bush arrived in Israel to mark the nation’s 60th anniversary and to renew his push for a Palestinian state as part of elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Barack’s buddies fired a rocket into an Israeli shopping mall. The mall was devastated, and 14 innocent civilians were seriously injured.
The Hamas endorsement of Obama is even more interesting when viewed against the backdrop of the group’s aggressive promotion of violence among young Palestinians in Gaza and in the context of a recent Al-Jazeera story about how young Palestinians in Gaza have banded together to call American voters at random asking them to vote for Obama. Rockets by night, Obama phone banks by day?
The fact that receiving Hamas support does not appear to disturb Obama should worry us even more than the fact that terrorists see something in him that they really like."
Barack the Snob:
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
So remember kids, don't vote for Obama, or anyone on the left side of the aisle this November. If you still don't understand, you should probably not be voting.
Two years ago on this day, my brother, Charles Robert Trost II, married Alison Carlisle. They are the perfect couple. I remember their wedding as if it were yesterday. They are young, successful, and in love. Also, they have the most adorable little girl. Here is what happens when you mix a Chuck and Alison:
It gets -really- good at 1:09.
I might add, she looks a lot like I did when I was about that age.
Anyways, shout out to Team Trost 2. Happy Anniversary!
As some of you may know, I LOVE lists. David Lettermen's top 10 lists, cracked.com's lists, if it is a list, I'm in love with it. They are just so genius. My life is just a giant list of things I'd like to do, broken down into sub-lists, of course. Here, I'd like to share with you a list of pieces of furniture that I'd like to own.
5- A giant NES controller that doubles as a coffee table:
I actually think it should be law that EVERYONE own one of these. And it's multi function! How can one shy away from the multifunction!!?
4- A 14-in-1 game table (I like games, and I like tables, and as stated above, I like multifunction) :
I really only need it for pool, foosball, and ping pong, but I'd gladly take the other 11 games. Also, this 14-in-1 can turn into a 15-in-1 by making it the dining table as well.
3- This bunk/bed/futon chair/desk set up:
It will save so much space when I'm poor and can't afford a lot of space. Also, notice the multifunction: hang a sheet over the desk area, and you have a little kid's dream fort/tent.
2- Entertainment center similar to this one:
Because items 3-5 were so cost effective, I'd probably save up enough money to splurge.
1- A dishwasher:
I've never had a dishwasher before, and I've never actually used one. But I have always been ridiculously jealous of all those dishwasher owners and operators. I -will- someday have my dishwasher.
My favorite thing about being 20 and graduated from school is that I can do just about anything I want with my life. It's like I have a whole building of open doors for me. Sure, it might be hard to get my foot into the door of my choosing, but as the old adage holds, "where there is a will, there is a way." I will have the support of my family and friends no matter where I go. My family is stable enough so that I don't have to worry about them, and in turn, I think they trust me enough not to make any completely irrational decisions.
Earlier today, I was listening to the audio book/biography of John Adams.
I'm continually impressed with his desire for life. He was a lawyer, a politician, a leader, and a great husband. But before all that, he had ambitions. If you think about it, no one ever gets anywhere without ambition. Anyways, back to John Adams. It was his goal to 'rise with the sun' and study fervently books that he's always wanted to read. He wanted to read 3 days a a week from Latin authors, and 3 days from Greek authors, and 1 day from English authors. He wanted to be counted as one of the great thinkers of his time. He wrote that in his journal. The next day, his journal entry showed "slept in all day, dreamed the day away." Dreaming, and imagination, was his bane. This was his goal when he was 20. He finally got it together, and went on to Harvard and became the 2nd President of the United States.
I'm 20 right now, soon to be 21. I would say that I have the 20-year old John Adams syndrome. I spend a lot of my time dreaming of things I want to do, and not enough towards doing them. Granted, I am a paralegal, which is helping me with my quest to go to law school. But I also want to do many many things with my life. I often wonder where I get this drive from.
I was raised in a very Philippino culture. On my mom's side, I'm a second generation American. On my dad's side, I'm a 4th generation American. Anyways, I was raised more Philippino than American. WIth us 2nd generation kids, we've always been taught to either be engineers or nurses. If you don't do either of those things, you have to either work for a really big company or the government to be considered successful. Stability, it's a huge sell, for very understandable reasons.
My point is, I don't want to do any of those things. I want to be unique and innovative. I want to go on an adventure. I want to be the president of some nice company. I want to be an astronaut. I want to be a detective. I want to have kids and send them all to fancy-pants private schools. I want to be able to call my own shots and keep my own money. I want to take risks, work hard, and play harder. I want to make tough decisions, lose it all, take twice as much back, and talk to homeless people and world leaders all in the same day. That's what I think the American dream should be. Is that too much to ask for?
