I finally began work at FJI this week! Although I was definitely a little nervous initially, I’ve really enjoyed this first week and am greatly looking forward to the weeks to come. One of the first lessons I am coming to realize is that legal work has a LOT of reading included. Opening a 100-page PDF that I have to read and thoroughly understand was certainly a wake up call for me. The thing is that in general, if I was required to read something of that length for school, I’d likely be extremely bored throughout and it would take me much longer than needed to actually get through it. Yet when I was reading the documents for the cases that I’m going to be working on, it didn’t even really feel like a chore. I actually felt engaged and interested in the topics in a way that I rarely am, which makes me all the more happy that I ended up at FJI this summer doing the work that I’m doing.
The one other point that occurred to me this week is about the impact of the work I’m doing this summer. I’ve never had a real internship before so whenever I have done work in the past, it has always been for school and just for a grade. Whether I did well or poorly didn’t matter to pretty much anyone except me. But what I’ve been reflecting on this week is that the work I do on these cases for the next few weeks matters in a way that nothing else I’ve ever worked on has, meaning that the quality of my work is far more important than it has ever been before. At first, this thought made me anxious, as I began to question whether I’m even qualified to be doing the work I’m doing. And after further sitting with it, I’m definitely still a bit apprehensive, but it also sort of reinvigorated me. Throughout my life, I’ve always said that I wanted to make a difference in some way, and I feel like the work that I’m doing this summer will truly make a positive impact in an area that I really feel passionate about. Not to get ahead of myself, I know that I’m just one intern in an organization and this summer is only 8 weeks long, but I’m still very grateful to be in a position where I feel like the impact of my work will be positive and meaningful.