Everything's Coming Up

(or "J.J.")

I have an announcement to make: I have a job this summer!

I'll be working in the compliance office of the University of Iowa Athletics Department. It's going to be awesome. I think it's going to be really cool, and different from a typical legal job. I like that I'll be working with college sports again, and kind of returning to my Daily Universe sportswriting days a little bit. Of course I won't be writing articles, but I'll be working more behind-the-scenes of running a college athletics program under the NCAA.

Erin is of course especially excited, because I'll be staying here in Iowa City this summer. Part of me (maybe most of me) really wanted to do a big adventure and spend the summer in D.C. or New York or something. I think having an internship in New York City a couple of summers ago really spoiled me - it kinda set the standard, and now almost everything else pales in comparison, haha. There wasn't really a whole lot in Iowa City that sounded interesting to me. But then I thought of working at the compliance office, and it was my favorite out of all the people who responded to my job applications. And Erin is happy that she'll have her husband around this summer to help her with our three kiddos.

One thing that will be great about this job is what it might set me up for. After working with NCAA compliance, I'll be on a track for lots of different jobs with the NCAA or any college or university. I think it would be awesome to stay connected with college sports and make a living out of it. I'm still interested in other areas of the law, but we'll see where this takes me.

The way I found the job is kind of interesting too. For my Summer 2013 Job Hunt, I basically applied for any job that came up in Symplicity (the online service that Iowa uses for posting jobs for law students) that looked interesting, including pretty much any judicial externship that came up. But I did think of some places to apply to on my own, including a Utah Supreme Court justice I met last year and a federal district judge in Houston who Erin's family knows. I asked my friends with connections in the baseball world, Dylan Higgins and Lakia Holmes, for any resources or ideas they had for finding a baseball legal job. I also applied for a couple of internships I discovered through the J. Reuben Clark Law Society.

But this one was totally my own initiative. There was a panel at the law school last semester with Dan Matheson and Monica Mims about the NCAA, college sports, and law. It was really interesting and got me more excited about working in sports law. (Of course, every time I come into contact with one of the areas of law I'm interested in, I think, "Yeah, that's what I want to do!" and that option rises above the others. So I change my mind a lot.) Dan Matheson used to work in NCAA enforcement, and used to work for the New York Yankees. Now he teaches sports business for undergraduates at Iowa. Monica Mims ran track for Iowa, then she got her juris doctorate here, worked in the USC compliance office, and now works at the compliance office here.

I emailed Monica, telling her I really enjoyed that NCAA panel and that I was interested in any internship opportunities at the compliance office this summer. I didn't even know if they regularly had interns or if that was even a thing. But she told me to come in for an interview, and at the interview she sounded like she was really interested in having me work there. Then a couple of weeks later I got an email from her, basically asking, "When can you start?"

I'll start at the end of May. Go Hawkeyes!

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Oh, and I should mention something else in the world of employment.

A lot of law students here start during their second year working as research assistants, or R.A.s. There are a lot of perks to being an R.A.: since you have a job in Iowa, you qualify for in-state tuition, and since you work for the university, you qualify for their health insurance. More importantly, you get to work one-on-one with a professor and help him or her with whatever research projects they are working on, or scholarly articles they are writing, or that sort of thing.

My professor for Foundations of International Law, Professor Burns Weston, invited me to apply for an R.A. position with him this coming school year. And then he offered me the job! So I'll be making some money during the rest of law school. It's only 10 hours a week, but it will be a great experience to be on the more academic side of law. And working with Professor Weston will be amazing. I really enjoy his class, and he is a leading expert in the field of international law, especially environmental law.

I'm lucky and very grateful to have these opportunities, and I'm looking forward to what I'll learn and do the rest of the year and beyond.

What's Next?

Back during the beginning weeks of my internship, Erin and I realized that it was time to make some decisions about our future. This internship was the culmination of my undergrad experience, so it was time to start thinking about what's next.

I loved studying and practicing journalism, but all along I didn't really bank on having a future as a newspaper reporter. If it had greater stability, higher pay and normal hours, it would be great. But with the current state of the newspaper industry, I would only really be happy if I got to write sports or write editorials (essentially, the two jobs I had at The Daily Universe). And even then, it would have to be at a major establishment like the New York Post, Sports Illustrated or ESPN.

So, the question was, should I start the process of climbing up the career ladder until landing a big job like that? Should I endure the years of grunt work and low pay? Should I do like John Grogan, and earn my stripes by writing about methane leaks at the county dump?

Or, should I do something entirely different? Maybe journalism school? Or law school? I've always loved my political science classes, and my interest in journalism overlaps with an interest in politics.

Erin and I thought, prayed, and went to the temple. I won't get into too much personal details about the different bits of revelation we received. But what led me to the answer was this talk by Elder Robert D. Hales:

Preparing for the Decade of Decision

Which led me to this talk by President Gordon B. Hinckley:

A Prophet's Counsel and Prayer for Youth ("The Six B's")

When President Hinckley said, "You need all the education you can get," and Elder Hales paraphrased him by saying "Get all the education you can," it hit me. I needed more school. Of course, getting an education could mean on-the-job training, etc. But, for some reason, I knew that what President Hinckley and Elder Hales were telling me to do was to go to law school.

And as I looked more into it, I got more and more excited. I enjoyed coming up with a list of schools with Erin, and thinking about studying either immigration law, some sort of international law, or something to do with First Amendment/freedom of speech law.

The first question I always get asked when I say I'm going to law school is: "Are you going to BYU?" Well, yes, I'll probably apply there. And it's a prestigious place to go. But one of the great things about going to New York City was Erin, Allisyn and me being on our own, in a city we've never lived in before. We're excited to try a completely new place.

The short list I have in mind includes Duke, North Carolina, Notre Dame (we spent a night in South Bend, IN, on our way to New York, and the campus and the town is just the sort of small town Erin would love to move to), Texas (close, but not too close, to Erin's family in Houston), Georgetown (I loved Washington, D.C. when we visited) ... and I'll apply to Utah and BYU too. Oh, and I would also like to try Stanford and/or Harvard, 'cause you never know.* I also need to think of some lower tier, smaller but locally renowned schools, something like Willamette.

Before I get too far into deciding on schools, I need to take the LSAT. I'll take it in both October and December, and I'll take an LSAT prep course through BYU. After I get some scores back, I'll have a better idea of what kind of schools I should be applying to.

This Saturday, my plan is to go to the library and give myself a practice LSAT test. I'll recreate the time limits and other rules as exactly as I can, and see what I come up with. That way, I'll know what my baseline is.

Wish me luck!

*My GPA is actually only two-hundredths away from the median GPA of first-year Harvard Law students. Either my GPA is more impressive than I thought, or Harvard is more attainable than I thought, haha.) So maybe with a good LSAT score I'll have a chance.

He's No Jim Henson

A big story in The Brooklyn Paper today:

New puppet theater opens on Columbia Street

In one sense, it's big because it's 442 words, by far the longest story I've had in the paper so far. Also, my editor said more than once that it was a big story. He trusted me with it and helped me turn it into something well done. (He even emailed me after I had already left the newsroom to point out something he liked about it.)

The topic is interesting, for sure. When you think of puppets, you probably think of Lamb Chop or Big Bird. But this new puppeteer in town, Jonathan Edward Cross a.k.a. Johnny Clockworks, has a different philosophy. For the kids, instead of only doing shows he also does workshops and teaches kids to do their own puppetry. And he also does shows for adults, and uses puppet plays that deal with some pretty deep topics. And from what I've seen, the word that keeps popping into my head to describe the puppets themselves is "mesmerizing."

Anyway, not that I'm an expert on puppetry now or that I want to take it on as my new hobby. Just wanted to explain that this story is more serious than you might think at first glance.

Oh, and the first comment on the story made me laugh. (Context: Brooklyn makes up Kings County in New York state.)

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And I helped out a little bit with this story:

West Street becomes home to genuine trailer trash

I was the one who took the photos. Basically, this street in Greenpoint is taken over by a construction crew, leaving their equipment all over and blocking fences and streets.

The neighbor I met with for the photo shoot, Jon Kosar, was a real nice guy. We even talked about Utah a little bit - turns out he lived in Ogden for a short time. For some reason it seemed funny to find a former Utahan in the middle of Brooklyn.

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Things are going pretty well here. I'm not close to mastering anything, but I am learning a lot and gaining a lot of experience, that's for sure. I loved working at The Daily Universe, but it's great to work at a nitty gritty city newspaper. Even if I don't end up with a career in journalism, I'll always be able to brag that I was a Brooklyn reporter.

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Speaking of where I end up, that's the big question weighing on me and Erin. Before coming to New York, whenever anyone asked me what we would do after graduating from BYU, I told them that I would know after my internship. Well, now I'm here, and it's time to start deciding what to do.

We long ago narrowed it down to me either going to grad school/law school or starting my way to a career. As you can see, that's not very narrow, haha. We're trying to think and study it out, we're praying about it and going to the temple.

Any advice or suggestions?