BY DAVID GARBETT
It’s quickly becoming apparent that OCI may not prove to be that helpful in actually getting a job this summer. However, all is not lost; if nothing else, the hospitality suite’s chocolate pretzels are pretty good.
My OCI experience started off with a bang. Through an inexplicable mismanagement of time, I ended up having to leave for my very first interview from the law school campus only ten minutes before it was to start.
After running the entire way to the Charles Hotel I arrived out of breath and covered in sweat.
Fortunately, my interviewer was a few minutes late, so I had time to try and dry my forehead. I kept thinking that if I were lucky she would just attribute my discomposed state to extreme nervousness.
Finally my time came and I entered the room for my first interview.
My interviewer – we’ll call her “Donna” – introduced herself and asked me to sit across from her at a small table in the room. She offered me some mints that came in a tin with the firm’s name on it and a Rubik’s Cube – also bearing the firm’s name.
In an attempt to test me, Donna explained that she was no good at solving the cube and she thought that women just couldn’t think spatially.
“Hmm,” I grunted. “Really?”
I didn’t think I could get in trouble for that answer. Curveball number one avoided.
We continued chatting and discussed the finer points of such things as skiing in the East and life in San Francisco – even though I’ve never lived there and was interviewing for London.
Then it happened. While discussing something like what a “nice kid from out West” was doing back at Harvard, Donna leaned back, tilted her head to the side, and looked under the table at my shoes.
Well this is strange, I thought to myself, because it wasn’t just a passing glance. She had a full-on stare for at least a second or two.
We continued.
Again, she leaned back, tilted her head to the side – in order to be able to see under the table – and looked down at my shoes. This time it was even more obvious, since she stopped talking and lingered even longer on my shoes.
“What’s wrong with my shoes?” I thought. There had to be something wrong. That’s the only explanation; why else would she look? Were they dirty, ugly, rubber-soled instead of wood, who knows?
The interview continued and finally ended. I never asked her why my shoes were so interesting.
When discussing the incident with my friends I tried to gain support for my theory that she was trying to send the message that there was something so obviously wrong with my shoes that it was beyond belief that I would wear them to an interview with her. It was an uphill battle.
One friend thought that she was just trying to gauge which office I would fit with best, because – according to my friend – you can tell a lot about a person by the shoes they wear.
I’m not so sure; I still think my shoes were so obviously offensive that she was amazed I would wear them. Regardless, if my shoes were really that bad I hate to think what she said when she saw my grades.
David Garbett is a 2L. That’s not a picture of his shoe, just the ugliest one we found on Google.