The Paradox...

...not of Choice or Progress -- though both books might have insights for OCIPing Boalt 2Ls, given their respective subtitles are "Why More Is Less" and "How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse". No, the paradox that came to my mind as I lay in bed exhausted but not sleeping was the fact that OCIP is at once a tremendously group-oriented yet at the same time solitary time for many 2 and 3Ls.

Never have so many Boalties looked, dressed and acted so similarly. We all crowd into the cramped halls of the Hotel Durant, dressed to the nines in our conservative navy or grey "interview suits", knock on doors simultaneously, make 20 minutes of polite but guarded conversation with law firm associates and partners, emerge, rehash our experiences with each other, rinse and repeat. For about two weeks straight. There's a certain "we're all in this together" camaraderie in the corridors that is pervasive at Boalt in general. And that's nice, especially if you're into the Boalt student body as a bunch of collegial clones -- personally I prefer it when we're all more like our usual collegial yet individual selves, but the interview process is what it is; we certainly didn't write the script and I don't blame anyone for following it.

But at the end of the day, OCIP also starkly reminds us that no, in fact, we're not all in this together. In many ways, we're totally on our own. We get rejections alone. We get callbacks alone. We don't, at least not above a whisper to our closest friends, or anonymously on certain blogs, talk about how we're doing. And of course there seems to be good reason for this. As CDO never fails to point out, you may be celebrating your 10 callbacks while a classmate next to you may be anxiously awaiting a first. But that nod to sensitivity aside, the often uncomfortable silence during OCIP is at least as noteworthy as the boisterous spirit of camaraderie that it punctuates.