Gotta Get a Job

After my morning walk and bowl of kibble, I perused my daily slew of websites and blogs. Of particular note -- aside from much about the inauguration of our new president -- was a post on Paul Caron's TaxProf Blog about the poor state of academia and professordom and such. The second section was an excerpt from a Forbes article describing the experience of law student couple who graduated with a ton of student loan debt and ended up getting divorced partially because of the financial strain.

This isn't really a new story, but I was still thinking about it a few minutes later in the shower -- it probably stuck with me because the students graduated from a law school just down the street -- when a horrible realization struck: I am those students. When I graduate in a year and a half, both I and Mrs. Goose will be paying off loans of a similar magnitude as those discussed in the excerpt. Plus I have the added responsibility/expense of a puppy of my own on the way. The couple in the article apparently had six-figure jobs and still had troubles, so my non-plan of just assuming that whatever job I take after school will be adequate suddenly seems extremely foolish. So the big realization is that I need to get serious about setting up gainful employment in 18 months or so.

To that end, I'll plan on chronicling here my endeavors to learn about the job market, how best to promote oneself, and any other tidbits and adventures that may come along. Perhaps my inevitable mistakes will prove useful to someone out there.