I appear to have a new job. Or, at least, a trial period at a new job. One of my friends mentioned that she knew a magician looking for a new assistant, oh hey you're a dancer do you fit the height restrictions? Yeah, sure, that sounds pretty cool. I'll give it a shot, let's set up a phone call and see what happens.
Next thing I know, I'm hired. Sight unseen. I had to send photos after the interview; he'd somehow got the idea that I was a blonde.
People keep doing that. Booking me for jobs -- including performance gigs and public-facing reception positions -- without ever seeing me in person. This weirds me out to no end. What the hell do I sound like over the phone that fills people with this bizarre confidence that I am clearly well-qualified for whatever work they want me to do, even though they have never met me before and have never seen me do any of the things they're asking? I could look like a shar-pei and trip over my own feet on a constant basis, for all they know. The only thing you can determine over the phone is that I don't have a lisp.
This particular magician does a lot of shows for the armed forces. He mentioned performing for Navy SEALs. Is this intimidating? Jazmin seemed to think so. Didn't occur to me until she said that. I also went and stripped for something like a thousand people at Hynes this past NYE without batting an eyelash. The intimidatingness detector in my brain is utterly broken and has been for a long time; I have no idea if he mentioned SEALs as an enticement or as a warning.
All I need is a law degree, I thought, and I really will be running the Wright Anything Agency.
Several other things occurred to me in quick succession after that.
Next thing I know, I'm hired. Sight unseen. I had to send photos after the interview; he'd somehow got the idea that I was a blonde.
People keep doing that. Booking me for jobs -- including performance gigs and public-facing reception positions -- without ever seeing me in person. This weirds me out to no end. What the hell do I sound like over the phone that fills people with this bizarre confidence that I am clearly well-qualified for whatever work they want me to do, even though they have never met me before and have never seen me do any of the things they're asking? I could look like a shar-pei and trip over my own feet on a constant basis, for all they know. The only thing you can determine over the phone is that I don't have a lisp.
This particular magician does a lot of shows for the armed forces. He mentioned performing for Navy SEALs. Is this intimidating? Jazmin seemed to think so. Didn't occur to me until she said that. I also went and stripped for something like a thousand people at Hynes this past NYE without batting an eyelash. The intimidatingness detector in my brain is utterly broken and has been for a long time; I have no idea if he mentioned SEALs as an enticement or as a warning.
All I need is a law degree, I thought, and I really will be running the Wright Anything Agency.
Several other things occurred to me in quick succession after that.
- I am not qualified to run the Wright Anything Agency.
- Technically, Phoenix Wright isn't really qualified to run the Wright Anything Agency.
- Phoenix is a fictional character, and fictional people do not check references.
- It is becoming apparent that real people do not go around checking references, either. Real people, for some reason, believe things said to them on the phone.
Lesson learned: The way you become a consultant is by printing up a bunch of business cards that say you are a consultant, and telling people to call you when they have a problem that needs solving. Evidently this also works for modeling, hooping, burlesque, writing, acting, MUAH, and costume design.
Second lesson learned: There is no such thing as useless information. I am pretty sure one of the reasons I was hired was that I correctly observed that the height restrictions I was given fit the standard plans for cabinet illusions like The Zig-Zag Woman and The Woman Without A Middle. I didn't think being obsessed with stage magic when I was a kid was ever going to amount to anything, especially since it's been decades since I've bothered practicing with cards or cups and balls, but I obviously underestimated how strange my life was going to get.
(Terrible corollary:
- Can I take the bar exam in the state of Massachusetts without sitting through law school first?
I have no idea, and am I resisting the urge to spend time looking it up.)
I'm 95% sure you could pass the bar without law school.
ReplyDelete-V
Oh, I could pass it, if I set my mind to it. It's just that in some states, you're not eligible to sit the exam without being sponsored by an accredited law school. I don't know if MA is one of them. It's the same idea as not being allowed to sit for the MD exams without going through medical school first, only it makes less sense, because so far as I'm aware, prospective attorneys aren't required to go through residencies.
DeleteI also don't know what counts as an accredited law school. For all I know I could get myself on the list by paying the (large) fee and producing a certificate from the Lionel Hutz Online School Of Law-Talking Stuff.
Technically you do not have to have a law degree to be on the Supreme Court.
ReplyDelete"Robert Houghwout Jackson (February 13, 1892 – October 9, 1954) was United States Solicitor General (1938-1940), United States Attorney General (1940–1941) and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941–1954). He is the only person in United States history to have held all three of those offices. He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. A "county-seat lawyer", he remains the last Supreme Court justice appointed who did not graduate from any law school (though Justice Stanley Reed who served from 1938 to 1957 was the last such justice to serve on the court), although he did attend Albany Law School in Albany, New York for one year."
That's a little different -- that's a judicial position, as opposed to serving as a licensed attorney. They like it if you have a JD, but you can also often serve if you've got an equivalent PhD, or sometimes if you just have a thousand years of experience as a judge already, and haven't impressed anyone as having gone senile yet. Judges in many jurisdictions are elected or appointed positions that do not require a license to practice law.
DeleteFrighteningly enough, in many of those same jurisdictions, the position of Chief Medical Examiner is handled similarly, and does not require you to have any medical training. Absent an MD, the position is often filled by a retired LEO or a funeral home director. One hopes in those cases the CME does paperwork and leaves autopsies to underlings who have some medical or anatomical training, but you never know.