bird lady = a little cuckoo
I saw birdlady today. I had to exchange one giant notebook for a new one. I've got 17 more hours of "work" to do to complete the 140 hours required by the internship and, since there's no point in starting another project, she's got me doing more, informative reading. Fun.
This is the first time I've seen her since I turned in my final draft of the brief. In case you don't remember, I spent the whole first half of this semester being chewed up and spit back out by birdlady once every week or so while flailing under the burden of this assignment which was, in my opinion, way over my head. I got little guidance and less positive feedback, I was chastised for asking questions, and all my work product was ruthlessly criticized. Keep in mind, I took every creative writing and poetry workshop available during undergrad (often taking the same classes repeatedly) -- and writing workshops are BRUTAL, at least they can be -- so I consider myself thick-skinned when it comes to taking criticism of my writing. But this was less like tough critiquing and more like school-yard bullying.
Anyway, when I turned in the final draft of that brief a couple weeks ago, I honestly had no idea how it was. All birdlady had been able to do for weeks was beat me up for overusing commas and other relatively insubstantial issues. She had neglected to mention whether the substance of my brief was at least in the right ball park. I feared I'd completely missed the mark, that she'd have to rewrite the whole thing herself, etc etc. It came as a complete shock to learn that she'd submitted my brief to the court "essentially unchanged." Unbelievable.
Today, she went out of her way to hammer home my success. She said "I spent the first half the semester beating you down, now I'm going to build you back up again." Thanks. I said "We have 17 hours left, so get to building." Ha ha. She told me that she'd given me extremely difficult, complicated work and that I'd done a great job. She told me that I had turned in work that was more than just professional quality, she said it was better than the work she sees from most practicing lawyers. She said I'd done work that practicing lawyers struggled with, and as proof, she showed me a brief that was written by a woman who's been practicing for 10 years. Birdlady was editing/polishing it for submittal in a few hours and she was clearly frustrated. I thumbed through the brief -- there was more of birdlady's ink on every page than there was type. Every line, every sentence, nearly every word had been scribbled over, rewritten, circled, changed. This was marked-up a thousand times more than any of my drafts had ever been. Wow.
She said, "You should feel really good about this. You did a really good job."
Wow. Too bad she was so screwy all semester -- now it's hard for me to have good feelings about this sudden, unexpected positive feedback.
She didn't have much time to talk today, but the whole time I was there, she was like a whole different birdlady. Super nice, super supportive. As I left, she walked me to the door and patted me on the back. Frankly, it was all just kind of sad. She's so socially awkward -- I think she's really just lonely and I think she has no idea that her attitude and behavior gave me PTSD. Now I feel sorry for cuckoo birdlady. But at least I know my brief didn't suck. For what it's worth. Maybe it'll actually get my client social security benefits. We'll see.
This is the first time I've seen her since I turned in my final draft of the brief. In case you don't remember, I spent the whole first half of this semester being chewed up and spit back out by birdlady once every week or so while flailing under the burden of this assignment which was, in my opinion, way over my head. I got little guidance and less positive feedback, I was chastised for asking questions, and all my work product was ruthlessly criticized. Keep in mind, I took every creative writing and poetry workshop available during undergrad (often taking the same classes repeatedly) -- and writing workshops are BRUTAL, at least they can be -- so I consider myself thick-skinned when it comes to taking criticism of my writing. But this was less like tough critiquing and more like school-yard bullying.
Anyway, when I turned in the final draft of that brief a couple weeks ago, I honestly had no idea how it was. All birdlady had been able to do for weeks was beat me up for overusing commas and other relatively insubstantial issues. She had neglected to mention whether the substance of my brief was at least in the right ball park. I feared I'd completely missed the mark, that she'd have to rewrite the whole thing herself, etc etc. It came as a complete shock to learn that she'd submitted my brief to the court "essentially unchanged." Unbelievable.
Today, she went out of her way to hammer home my success. She said "I spent the first half the semester beating you down, now I'm going to build you back up again." Thanks. I said "We have 17 hours left, so get to building." Ha ha. She told me that she'd given me extremely difficult, complicated work and that I'd done a great job. She told me that I had turned in work that was more than just professional quality, she said it was better than the work she sees from most practicing lawyers. She said I'd done work that practicing lawyers struggled with, and as proof, she showed me a brief that was written by a woman who's been practicing for 10 years. Birdlady was editing/polishing it for submittal in a few hours and she was clearly frustrated. I thumbed through the brief -- there was more of birdlady's ink on every page than there was type. Every line, every sentence, nearly every word had been scribbled over, rewritten, circled, changed. This was marked-up a thousand times more than any of my drafts had ever been. Wow.
She said, "You should feel really good about this. You did a really good job."
Wow. Too bad she was so screwy all semester -- now it's hard for me to have good feelings about this sudden, unexpected positive feedback.
She didn't have much time to talk today, but the whole time I was there, she was like a whole different birdlady. Super nice, super supportive. As I left, she walked me to the door and patted me on the back. Frankly, it was all just kind of sad. She's so socially awkward -- I think she's really just lonely and I think she has no idea that her attitude and behavior gave me PTSD. Now I feel sorry for cuckoo birdlady. But at least I know my brief didn't suck. For what it's worth. Maybe it'll actually get my client social security benefits. We'll see.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 9:37 PM
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