From Waitress to Attorney at Law: How Education Can Change a Career.Parts 2

 **Career job information for job seekers and find good   employment job 

 By Micah Pilkington

Career Path Found in Criminology Degree

WWL: Walk us through your career path.  You graduated from high school; then what?

MW: I graduated from high school and went to community college for about a year and a half, not doing my work, not trying very hard, being eighteen years old.  [Laughs] I kept withdrawing from classes because I wasn’t going or getting good grades. I was like, “You know, I’m just not going to go back next semester.”

So I quit doing it for about a year.  I worked as a busser in a restaurant and a gift wrapper. I worked six days a week. It was hard work and not very fun, and I was poor.  Finally I said, “I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life. I think I’d better go back to school.”

I went back to community college and basically started from scratch. I spent two years in community college, and then I transferred to Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon. I went to school part time for the first year, because I was getting my residency, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Criminology.

WWL: What drew you to a criminal justice degree?

MW:  I’d always been interested in it; I always liked “L.A. Law,” [Laughs] police shows, all of that. When I transferred schools, I had to declare a major. Criminology was on the list of available majors, and I thought it sounded interesting. 

I liked the classes in the Criminology department.  I had a class on jails where we toured Pelican Bay, which is a maximum-security prison; that was fascinating.  I had two professors who were lawyers; one had been a district attorney. I did my internship at the juvenile department in Medford, Oregon, where I worked with the juvenile court, which was really interesting. I really enjoyed it. I think that was when I decided I wanted to go to law school.

There weren’t many jobs [in Oregon] –it was really competitive, what was there. I'd worked during school waiting tables. With just my bachelor’s degree, I didn’t see a big career market. Law school was the next logical step, and I knew I was probably going to need to relocate.

Preparing for the LSAT & Law School

WWL: How did law school end up happening?  Did you move away from Oregon?

MW:  I did. When I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, my plan was to move and go to law school, but not immediately. I had worked all through undergrad, usually as a waitress. I knew I had to leave Oregon to find a job.

I looked at what was out there, and there were six law schools in the city of Chicago.  My cousin and another good friend of mine were also living there at the time, so I decided to move to Chicago. I got a full-time job to pay my bills and started gearing up to start law school. One year after I moved, I started getting ready to take the LSAT (Law School Admissions Test).

WWL: How did you prepare for the LSAT?

MW:  I took an LSAT preparation class that was offered through Loyola, where I ended up going to school. I think it was five Saturdays in a row for eight hours a day.

I took that class and bought a book that had practice tests.  Also, a friend of mine suggested that I get books of logic games.  So I went to the grocery store and bought a few of those, and I practiced the logic in that. And that helped a huge amount. ( jobs employment ).......