Thursday, September 13, 2007

It was bound to happen sometime

I finally did it. I had an offensively liberal moment during one of my interviews and totally pissed off my interviewer.

Scene: Conference Room in the Law School
Characters: Me and Young Partner with Law Firm D (for Denver)

YP: So, I see you majored in Comparative Politics. What is that?
M: Oh, it's a subset of the government major at Dartmouth. Basically, I ended up majoring in it because I was taking a lot of survey Latin America courses with a professor I liked that all fit into that concentration of the major.
YP: Yeah. But what is it? Like, do you compare other forms of government in Latin America to American government and to each other?
M: Yes. Basically that's pretty accurate.
YP: So. What's the best form of government?
M: Uhhhhh.... weeeeell..... [insert awkward laugh]
YP: [leans forward in his chair to make himself more intimidating] This is the point at which you say democracy.
M: Weeeeell.... I would say democracy, but I've gotta stick with my gut here and say that I just don't think it works everywhere. Especially in Latin America where you have a history of a lot of grass roots resistance to it.
YP: [shocked and angry] Well. I would say something. But we're not supposed to get into this sort of substance in our interviews.
M: [mentally crossing this firm off my list of firms I hope to get a callback at]

This guy went on to later stick my resume in front of me, point at my highlighted GPA, and say: "so. With these grades, why aren't you on law review?" I was like: "READ my flipping resume. I'm on a journal! If I'm not on law review, clearly it's because law review didn't want me. Thanks for bringing that up again. Ass."

Or, at least that was what I was like in my head. Out loud I think I lamely drew his attention to my list of activities and said I couldn't really account for why law review didn't want me, but clearly I had done the writing competition and so they rejected me and not the other way around.

No callback for Bagel at Law Firm D. Oh well.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Ha ha ha - total set-up there. Oh man, that's so great!

It's such a thing as you would say. But really, would you want to work with an ass like that? Probably not. So at that point, you should have told him he was the one who brought it up, so he might as well say whatever the hell he was thinking.

Clearly a good move. Otherwise we would have heard all about him next summer. :)

Anonymous said...

I'm with Michelle. I'm really surprised that answer pissed him off, and if something so benign made him angry, then I wouldn't want to work there either. It's not like your answer wasn't thoughtful, and I highly doubt Mr Lawyer Interviewer Dude is an expert on Latin American politics.

On a separate note (warning: unasked-for sister advice coming up): I think you need to start formulating your answers a little more confidently. There's no reason not to say that you designed your major because you were interested in Latin American politics. If you really said it the way you worded it here, it leaves the impression that you just 'ended up' in that major rather than designed it with some thought and intelligence. And I don't care what the truth is, nor do they.

Arrogance, Bagel! Be. More. Arrogant! What the hell did we send you to that Ivy League college for if not to gain a little hutzpa?

Love,
Big Colle