welcome everybody this is fernanda sanchez yara she was a former avid student here and class that says up here class of 2013. um she can tell you a little bit about i guess her journey and what if you know we could even started what it was like in high school for you or even before then remember last time we kind of you spoke about coming from another country yeah yeah so um my name is fernanda like mr d said um i was born in mexico uh me and both of my siblings i have an older brother and a younger sister and we came to the us when i was nine i was in fourth grade um so that was i was you know older already um so it was a bit of an adjustment took me some time to learn english to get comfortable speaking english i was just talking about this with some of my friends yesterday actually they asked me how long it took me to learn english and i would say i knew english within like the first year so it was pretty quick but like actually getting loose with it took me a couple years just because i was so shy and embarrassed to speak it um so yeah so that came with a few challenges um i had you know pretty bad grades in fifth grade just kind of as a result of the adjustment and then i got it together and i started getting good grades again um and then i came into high school and again it was it was a good experience for me i never um i wasn't like a bad student i would say i was a pretty good student i got good grades i did my homework you know i kind of did what i was supposed to do i guess if you can say it in that way um uh and i i don't i can't i feel like every time i come back and speak it's harder for me to talk about high school because it just keeps getting further and further back do you think as you started high school did you already have pretty good habits do you remember how did you study every night how long do you remember studying and working in high school for for studying and doing homework uh definitely not as much it just it kind of gradually kept so in the moment in high school i thought i studied a lot and you know spend so much time on my homework and then you get to college and you realize oh no like that i had so much free time technically and then um you get to lost when it's like oh wow like college was serious compared to law school so it's just like it's gradually just keep gotten more and more time spent studying um in high school i would say i had pretty good habits i've just always naturally i think i'm more of a routine person so i just like routine so i had you know i would come home go to school go to i was in tennis so tennis practice come home do my homework eat dinner and just like watch tv for the rest of the night and that's just kind of what my life was every single weekday essentially um i know that's not for everyone but i think again i'm just very routine oriented and i was just i liked my regimen and it was just what i did um were you involved in other things besides um tennis you mentioned clubs or anything like that yeah i was in clubs um key club i'm sure it's still around it's big uh what other do something club i don't know that's still around uh international club national honor society um there's i don't even know what clubs are still around i know some of them we might have done for like avid required for you know participation and stuff yeah you did way more than you needed to was there what do you and do you remember that was so far long ago uh do you remember a benefit like later in life now do you feel like it was worth being a little bit involved and what you love it yeah for sure um i think you don't when you're in the moment you don't really think about the benefits of being clubs and socializing with other people bring to you but um once you're older and you're in college and you're law school and you're interviewing you kind of realize that you pick up all these networking skills in clubs that are so useful when you're older i mean you're in high school we don't really think about networking because we're kids and you know we're young who cares like why do i need to kind of connect with you know my high school peers but it just builds on those communication skills and just uh having connections with other people you just never know where knowing one person is gonna lead you in the future and it's just definitely yeah aside from that it's just good to socialize especially after the pandemic when we were all just scooped up at home and we had absolutely no social interaction and we can easily turn off our cameras i think we all lost a lot of uh you know in person interaction social skills that are crucial because at the end of the day we're all gonna go back out one day you know it's not we're already all pretty almost back to normal which i don't really know how if that's accurate but would you say yeah we're not completely back to normal me personally i'll never be normal uh yeah do you think that you were i don't remember exactly were you pretty shy at the beginning of high school and because those things really helped get you out of your shell to be a lawyer you probably have to be pretty confident and outgoing yeah i was for sure super shy i was extremely shy in elementary school extremely shy in middle school i think high school is kind of when i forced myself to come out of my shell a little by you know being in clubs and talking to other people that i didn't know and um i was president of the drew something club one club and that was like that took a lot out of me i was super uncomfortable just kind of putting myself in that position but i just kind of wanted to try out try it out just because i never had and i wanted just you know to put myself out there and kind of build better skills um i don't think that was it's hard for them to appreciate that right when you start getting a little bit more involved in a club you're building these life skills that are going to help you to really be a great leader and everyone's a leader whether it's at your home or whether it's at your job yeah no being involved is definitely something that's over long term really good for you i was very shy to believe it or not when i was in high school and i think like you said there's friends and friends but also mentors that i have for the rest of my life that i never thought i would that was like an extra bonus that you meet these people that that teach you and help you grow but they stay with you in your life sometimes yeah and it's such an easy way because you don't really when you're in clubs you're just kind of like hanging out with your friends you don't really think about that you're building those skills but it's actually really useful skills that you're building without even thinking about it so it's such an easy way to do it to just be involved in clubs and just get to know other people and talk to other people and clubs are great do you remember what your gpa was or when you were applying more or less i really don't i can't remember like my first couple years college gpa i don't know i really don't remember what it was but i know it wasn't it wasn't a bad gpa it wasn't like wow amazingly over 4.0 but it wasn't bad that makes sense um how would you explain your transition to well even before then um do you remember your choice as a where you thought you might go which college and how you decided on the college you chose i'll go to the next slide you went to uc irvine yeah yeah so i was deciding between uc irvine and uc santa barbara and then i ultimately just chose for two reasons one was the money um irvine just kind of allowed me to go there and pay almost nothing so that was really important to me um especially because you know my parents weren't going to be able to help out to pay for anything and i just didn't know how i could have financed them with loans so that was important to me and then the second thing was my family um i've just always like i said i grew up very shy and i was always very family oriented so i liked that irvine was far enough where i could kind of you know challenge myself and live on my own and kind of grow as an adult that way but close enough where it's like if i was having a mental breakdown i could come home so those were the two major factors of why i chose irvine um i went in undecided as a major so it wasn't even any academic reason for why i chose or when i was the money in how close i was to home let me ask if there's any questions any questions about high school or starting college so far when you're undecided you start your general education which means it's the classes that everyone has to take a little bit of math a little bit of science a little bit of english that's a good question so everyone does general class certain general classes and then when you decide on your major you start focusing more on that but uh yeah when you're undecided you kind of try things out that you have to take anyway so let's talk about college what was that like or i remember you mentioned your roommate and how your roommate what your roommate was like and you mentioned stuff that she was doing in high school and then i'll ask you in a minute like what do you think you wish you had done more or prepared or new even knew before you got to college yeah um so the transition to college was pretty shocking you kind of you know when we live in montebello pico where you're down whatever all our lives we're kind of in this bubble and we don't really know what goes on outside of it and then you get to college and you meet people from all these backgrounds all these nationalities all these communities all these schools and you just kind of realize that wow like i really didn't do anything in high school um mr d is talking about my one of my college roommates who was doing cancer research in high school and i was just completely shocked when she told me this just because i had absolutely no idea that high school kids got these kinds of opportunities just because i never even heard of it i was never exposed to it i never heard of anyone at mhs ever doing cancer research any research for that matter um so it was a bit of a shock just kind of you know you get good grades in high school you you're pretty smart you're involved and then you get to see all these other people who have been a lot more fortunate than you yeah you go to college and everyone's smart and a good student but then some people do have more opportunities and even let's say you're rich right your parents could send you to any camp or do stuff that has research in another state um there was a quote one of the students gave me from we put up on the board quotes um when when opportunity doesn't knock make a door so i would say if you know one advice i would give is make your own opportunities but you got to start trying to think beyond high school which means trying to get stuff like volunteer work or internships or things that you're really interested in especially if you know what you want to study but not everyone knows yeah so what was your investment like when you got to college what was the what sorry the adjustment how was the adjustment um i would say some parts were easy and some parts were tough the tough one was kind of you know coming to the realization that i'm not the smartest person there and kind of dealing with all that and not kind of knowing at the same time because a lot of people going to college exactly knowing what they want to do as well after college so like you said thinking beyond high school they're thinking way beyond high school when they're in high school they're not just thinking about um college or thinking about what they want to do after which i don't think it's the only way to go i think that can be very overwhelming and i think i wasn't thinking beyond college beyond getting accepted to college in high school and i i think it turned out pretty okay um but i think you know kind of having some sort of idea of what you want to do and it's going to change it's not i'm not saying you know pick something and stick with it forever but just kind of having i guess the better word is a goal going in with a goal know what you want to do because i think once you're in college there's absolutely no one on you telling you what to do it's you choose your own classes you choose your schedule you choose whether you want to go to class you choose whether you want to do your homework um so the independence aspect of it can also be tough again i am very routine oriented so i think that wasn't as tough for me as i saw other friends struggling with who just no routine meant they just kind of wanted to do whatever they wanted to do all day sometimes routine feels like you're being controlled but in reality like it's very good for you to have structure um i think yeah i think when we went on lockdown it showed being on your own is not as easy as we think and having your own ability to stay in bed or not get up or do my homework or not do my homework it's actually difficult if you don't build up the discipline before you yeah yeah and i think college a good aspect of it is that you can build your own routine so in high school you have a routine that somebody gives you and you have to stick with it and it doesn't you know so far not mourning people so it's like you're asking people that our nighthouse to get up early in the morning and go to school whereas in college you have the freedom to make a routine that works specifically for you so i think that's a great aspect yeah exactly like that's a really easy way to find out what works for you and you know a better chance that you're actually going to stick with it um which is something that again the adjustment takes a while if you're not already routine oriented but once you find it i think it's something that very beneficial about college so you can just make your own hours pretty much and what were your involvements in stuff like in college or how did you come to deciding you want to study criminology law and psychology and social behavior so it was a process of elimination i remember in high school i did think about becoming a lawyer but i never really actively took any steps to look into what it took to become a lawyer so it was just kind of more of like i don't know i thought a dream maybe um and then in college i knew i did not like science i did not like math so that kind of just left me with the social sciences and then i took um a few law classes in college just to like kind of really try it out and see whether it was something that i would like to do and then i had um a friend who her boyfriend was pre-law like he was pretty law course he was going to law so he was doing all the things to go to law school um so then that kind of i hadn't like made up my mind 100 that i was going to pursue law school but i knew that i kind of wanted to stay on that path just in case so that's how i ended up choosing my majors um and i just genuinely found them interesting those were the classes that i just liked the most i suffered and all the other ge classes that they made me do science though i got away with not taking math i took linguistics that's my math g and it worked i don't know how but i took it um and statistics of course statistics is just important all around um so that's kind of what how i chose my major did you did you take notes in college a lot of notes yeah i did um how did you use like what was your routine to use them you take notes in class and then what would it be like or how much time would you even spend every day to study when you're in college so in college i would do my readings for class um and then you would go to i do my readings take reading notes and then you go to class you take lecture notes and then maybe once or twice a month i would compile my reading notes and my lecture notes and kind of look through both of them and just put them together just it was a way of studying for me reviewing both of those notes and just putting them together and then right before yeah right before an exam i would go through my compiled notes and then review quickly my um separate notes just they were usually a lot more longer and detailed than my compiled notes and i would make even a shorter outline to use as my study guide um i don't i wouldn't say that i studied every day in college it was mainly just right before finals that i would hardcore study but i would review my notes constantly just kind of preparing for class um would you like to highlight them or write on them or how would you interact with them yeah i'm a i'm a big highlighter annotator on my own notes it just kind of helps me read and process things differently than i did the first time just for better retention um and even through law school that's the way that kind of everyone does it and you're taught to do it just make outlines and then review your outlines out of your outlines make new outlines it's just outlines left and right and also that's just how everyone does it and i just happen to have been doing that since college i'm not sure how i even started picking that up because in high school we would do cornell notes i don't know if that's still an evident thing now we get to do anything outlines cornell any style okay yeah so i think i like that better just uh cronellas were never that healthy they were helpful in terms of thinking about the material but i think just the organization of them i was just never a fan of i like just outline format a lot more everyone's different yeah that's i'm glad it yeah yeah for sure you know different things work for everyone um so yeah that was that i would say that was the main way i studied too just outlining i never i'm not a flash card i know a lot of people are and it's they're very useful but i just cannot do flashcards i'm strictly an outline person is there i was going to ask you what what things you might have been involved in in college but is there anything you could think of that you wish you knew before you got to college to prepare you better yeah i think now you know hence i 2020 but i do i wish i would have gained networking skills a lot better we were talking about clubs and how you that kind of happens organically but i like i was talking about i wasn't trying to better those skills i wasn't trying to you know network with people and kind of come out of my shell in that way it was just organically happening with my friends i was developing those skills but i do wish i would have actively networked a lot more in high school i know that maybe if i had looked for opportunities i would have found them but i never did and then i think in college i i was kind of i there was kind of a regression and shyness once again in college just in high school you know you get used to everyone that you see every day and you have your friends and you kind of know everyone but in college it's so big that i kind of regressed a little bit again and i just kind of stuck with my group of people that i found and i wish i would i wouldn't have done that i wish i would have been more involved the clubs that i was in it was because my friends were in them so it wasn't i wish that i would have just come out of my shell a little bit more and networked a lot more with people that i that were my friends that weren't in my dorm that weren't in my classes just to have more connections and more opportunities coming out of college and into law school i think it's almost like working out like you don't want to do it and it's like but then you when you do it you're so glad you did i i feel the same way that i was very shy i was involved in some things i did asb senior year and i regret not starting sooner or later wanting to do it as a thing you kind of just do it because everyone says to do it and you're not going to get as much out of it um so now you know we're real quick if you could mention is there any things that you kind of were involved doing or even fun stuff in college and then how we how did we get into law school would be the next question yeah so in college i was just in the fun clubs i didn't really do many academic clubs i went to like a few pre-law society meetings again just because i was scoping it out and trying to decide but a lot of college i was just trying to make friends from different backgrounds that was like my focus i just wanted to meet people because i mean i still live i live in pico now um and it's used to see the same people every day so i just i think that was something that just fascinated me about college just you see so many different types of people so a lot of my clubs were just social clubs international food club international dance club um do things you like that's good yeah yeah i'm not networking academically but again you never know who you're going to meet and how that person's going to connect to you in the future um so yeah i think i did have a lot of fun in college and i don't regret it it was great have you have you have friends from high school and college still do you keep them you still have some friends from college in high school yes um i still keep in touch with uh like my main high school group mr dinosaur monica andreas joseph julio my boyfriend gio um they're all they're all from avid too yeah but yeah she's still dating her high school sweetheart i believe yes yes so we all still hang out you know at least i would say every couple months we still keep in touch um and then in college i'm still extremely close uh with uh who were my housemates for most of college um i see them all the time one of my college housemates actually took the exact same path as me we kind of went to the whole law school application together we went to law school at the same time different law schools we took the bar together and now we're working our first year in law firm so it was nice to have everybody that i love and i'm extremely close to through all of that so let's say you're in college now you finally decided on your major and you want to be a lawyer someone asked what's the process of becoming a lawyer and what was that like yeah so it's not hard anybody with any major can really go anywhere law school in law school i met people with engineering majors biology majors you know like me criminology psychology majors they're kind of all over at the place um you have to take the lsat to apply to law school um like a sat for for law school to get into life yeah yeah there's no math in it which was a big appeal for me it's reading comprehension there's this thing called logic games um which can be fun but i hated them um and then well i can't even remember the third section of it but yeah it's it's it's basically a test of tests mainly your reading comprehension and your logical analysis um you do well you don't have to but i took a test prep course to take the lsat um i would recommend it especially for the logic games because it's something that you've never seen before i don't think anyone would ever see them before maybe people that have you know lawyers in their family probably have but i don't have any lawyers in my family so i had absolutely no idea what they were going to test me on on the lsat so i would recommend taking a test prep course for that and then you take it you apply to law schools um and then you get it or not it's a very simple process which is something that was really appealing to me especially having decided for sure to pursue law school pretty late in college um i didn't completely make up my mind until my senior year in college um and then i took the lsat that summer applied to law schools that fall and then took like a gap year which it's like less than a year technically but i did take a gap year and then you just you start as you didn't prepare for it you're obviously very bright even though you're not saying you are because a lot of people they don't do well even though they study and study and study um yeah yeah for sure you you you know you submit your college transcripts of your application so you do have to make sure to get good grades in college um but yeah i mean i don't i don't think there's anything like super grueling about the law applying to law school process you just kind of you know you have to be responsible you have to meet deadlines you have to like we mentioned make sure that you were studious in college and that you got good grades because a lot of the times it's the grades translate into money in law school the more money yeah the higher your better the grades the better your lsat score the more money that you're going to get so again finances have always been important to me and a big reason of why i choose schools that i've gone to so where is loyola what's it's in downtown l.a oh it's influenced nearby yeah it's part of layla it's part of layla marymount but the law school campus is in downtown l.a just because they wanted to be close to all the law firms makes sense yeah you said high school you thought was like a you know pretty a lot of work whatever then you get to college and it's way more but then you went to law school so what was law school like how was that transition from college it's definitely hours a day where you're working and studying and stuff i mean i'm gonna stay 14 hours a day just kind of in between class studying reading prepping networking events uh outside activities of classes it's just it's it's more than a full-time job going to law school but i don't i wouldn't like in the moment i was never miserable i was miserable when you know studying for finals that was absolutely horrendous but we all go through you know horrendous things in our lives i don't i wouldn't say that would discourage me from doing it again i would do it a thousand times over again um i think a little challenge is good for people you know it's not good to be like super comfortable and just kind of static in your life um you meet so many people yeah yeah you meet a lot of people it's it challenges you helps you grow as a person um and i i i would recommend law school i think the law school seemed to be harder than it is and when i speak about it and say you know i was doing like 14 hour days and this and that sounds horrible but in the moment it's not because it's not like i'm just sitting at my desk for 14 hours like in class you're engaging with the professors you're engaging with your classmates so that you know it feels different um there's times where you do have to sit down and read and outline but then you're also out there they have uh what they call law reviews which is essentially like law school newspapers but they're they're published journals you know courts use these journals to rule on cases sometimes they're cited in a lot of case law um so it's like a newspaper but it reaches kind of the country not just your school um so i was involved with that i was a staff member my my sec because you can only apply going into your second year of law school so i was a staff member my second year and a board editor my third year of law school which is the last year of law school um so that also brings an aspect an editor so yeah how did you decide on what kind of a lawyer you wanted to be i know there's different types of law yeah there's so many different types of law even now i'm learning of all the different types of law that i still don't know exist um so like i mentioned i'm not an extrovert whatsoever um when you think of lawyers you think of movies and shows where they're just arguing with each other and in the courtroom and i knew that wasn't going to be me so those are called litigators i know myself and i might cry in front of a judge so i knew for sure litigation was out of the question for me so then um the next natural course for me was transactional law which just kind of you know contracts basically is what you do and then i thought that's what i want to do and then i got into the firm where i am now and they have regulatory law which you know it's a bunch of consulting i uh practice healthcare regulatory law so it involves um just consulting hospitals uh senior living facilities on you know what the laws are what the regulations are how they comply with them what they need to do you know staffing needs uh drug licensing in some way making sure the hospital doesn't get sued and done okay yeah that's that's what i do and that's what i like to do because again i don't want to be in the courtroom i know that's not me um so a lot of people when i told them i wanted to be a lawyer especially when i was younger they would be like oh like you don't really talk that much like how i had a professor in college who taught he taught english in german but he was a defense attorney for people on death row and that's huge thing he would just do the right the right the writing part he would yeah so you don't even have to go to court as a lawyer people don't know how to do that yeah so you know if you ever have thought about law and you're not you know the most extroverted talkative person out there there is absolutely a kind of law out there for you you don't need to go to court you don't need to even talk to really many people um in some types of law um some things i've done yeah what i'm reading the slide oh yeah i think she's a she's a legal assistant legal clerk a review board member as she mentioned that um she was an international student mentor meaning she mentored the i guess the international students at uci she and you did translation how did you get involved with translating stuff because again a lot of students here know two languages and don't realize it's such a great benefit yeah it was when i was um a legal clerk in college it was part of and we had to do an internship as part of the major and i was at a small boutique law firm in irvine and then you know 99.5 of the lawyers there were uh white so no one spoke spanish and we would get a lot of clients from santa anas a lot of spanish speaking clients and the receptionist spoke spanish but not the the lawyers so they kind of wanted me to learn more about the law and be able to translate legal terms um so that's how i started translating and then um in law school i kept it up too when i would still help out the irvine law firm even now on my job uh some of the pro bono cases that we have those are the ones they do yeah yes they usually bring me on because i speak spanish because you know sadly in the legal world there's almost no latino latina lawyers out there i am one of three lawyers in the office who are hispanic so how many are there in your office 67 wow yeah yeah it's it's sad to see you know and i it's the same with college like you're in montebello high school you're the majority but then you go to a lot of colleges and suddenly you're the minority and yeah where you work is even three out of 60 something is a quite a small amount yeah and it's more valuable it seems like people they seek out because they a lot of places want diversity so it actually it makes you more valuable in some sense yeah it for sure does make you more valuable especially being able to speak spanish again we have all these i mean the firm that i work in is pretty big so we don't our clients are not really you know individual people so spanish is not needed in like their regular work but in all of the pro bono work that we do it's almost always with spanish-speaking clients just because we're in la and it it makes me a really great asset to the firm to speak spanish and be able to help them in all of these cases so definitely speaking more than one language any language is amazing and you should practice it because it's going to be very useful to you once you know you're out working in the world um yeah so you know let's talk about the good stuff so you you you work so hard you become a lawyer you're making probably good money what are some fun things or you know opportunities and good stuff that you've gotten uh to do just because of how hard you worked so i the first thing that comes to mind is that i get to travel for work quite a lot i started in november and i've been on four work trips already and on the work trips it's amazing because they pay for flight hotel food they take you out to super nice restaurants and you get to go to like fancy dinners and museums and it's an amazing perk that i never thought i would ever experience um you know coming from where i come from i wasn't really exposed to a lot of these things um growing up so i i like that i get to be pampered for free and it doesn't come out of my pocket i would say that's like the biggest perk of working i think you need someone to translate ukrainian i'll go on a trip with you that's great yeah yeah it's it's great um other persons obviously the money i have never made this kind of money before so it's nice to not worry about that like i said my college and law school decisions were made because of the money i had to choose these schools because of the money you know so it's nice that money it's not such a prevalent thought in my mind anymore it's nice to be financially secure and just kind of it's one less thing to worry about you know that unfortunately it's something we think about a lot and yeah i remember some of the most stressful times in college in my life in my life where in my family my parents was worrying about money how are we going to pay the rent yeah are we going to pay our bills oh my god the car broke down how are we gonna get somewhere we don't have the money to fix it it's very stressful money when you don't have it it's not it's not everything in life but when you don't have it it's everything because you're so stressed out um yeah for sure ask them do anybody have any questions you want to ask before we kind of wrap it up do you know how much you paid or how many how much in loans you paid for college so in college i only paid about five thousand dollars that was the only thing that came out of my pocket which was amazing which you know why i went to uc irvine um so i didn't really come out with many debt or any debt at all from college and then law school down was more um loyola paid for about 60 of what's good everything um so i came out of there with about eighty thousand dollars in loans which sounds like a lot but it really isn't when you take into account you know how much money you'll be making after law school and how fast you'll be be able to pay it off so i don't i don't like to discourage people from you know going to college and going to law school and or medical school whatever they want because of the money um i do encourage everyone to think about what the return is going to be though just you know if you go and spend hundreds of thousand dollars in education and we have to be realistic about it and you choose a major that's not going to be lucrative to you then you know that's when it gets tough and we've had that and i try to warn students if you're going to go be a social worker you're never going to get paid what you deserve really deserve to be paid a lot right but you go to usc and you spend 200 000 you literally might be paying that back for 30 years yeah you have a in business you're going to go into business or like you said law or medicine where you're going to make 100 150 sometimes half a million dollars at some point uh a year you can pay it back and you have to be smart about where your decision doesn't mean don't be smart about it yeah any other question school life law anything one second how long did it take you to finish uh college and law school and everything and get and oh you might want to even mention what was it like taking the bar exam so when you graduate law school you still have to take an exam to be a lawyer it's called the bar exam was that really really hard yeah um so in total four times before he passed it who did i know he's a district attorney now my friend's husband took like four or five times to pass yeah yeah it's a tough one um college was four years and law school is three years and then i took a gap year in between college and law school so total it was eight years after high school which i have to say my past lincoln and i yeah like i i still feel like i was just in high school two years ago and it's been almost 10 years and it's ridiculous to think about so don't let it be kind sorry you still look like you're in high school thank you yeah don't time discourage your time is going to pass by whether you're pursuing your goals or not so you know might as well let eight years pass by and then you're whatever you want to be after those eight years um so for sure time should not be something you're concerned about especially being so young and i still feel super young too i'm 27 and i don't feel a day over 22. and then the bar yeah that was probably the toughest time academically i've had in my life it's really challenging it's two months of just constant studying i was putting in again you know 12 14 hours a day but that that you feel because that you are literally at your desk just studying all day long and yeah it was extremely tough i i'm a person that doesn't really i work well under pressure and the bar cracked me it did i was not working well under pressure and it was the first time in my life where i was extremely stressed about you know school that brings up the question i was going to ask after this the last question i have is how did you handle anytime you had a really difficult diversity or something overwhelming to work with how did you cope i think it has a lot to do with the people that you surround yourself with um i am very grateful to have extremely supportive family extremely supportive friends extremely supportive boyfriend and everyone just kind of knew you know that i was preparing to take the bar and i was on this journey and i didn't see my friends and all this time and everyone was super understanding like no one was upset that i never replied i disappeared for two and a half months basically um and everyone was super understanding and supportive and when i was in you know active breakdowns and crying i was just geo my boyfriend is usually the person that would have to deal with that so i would just call him up or he would come over and bring me food and you know kind of discomfort me remind me why i'm doing what i was doing um but it really is about yeah yeah it's about the people that you surround yourself with you have to make sure that you know everyone around you understands what you're doing because you are at least for me and i know a lot of my friends who were also studying for the bar last summer um you're under a lot of stress and you're very moody and you are going to be you know passive aggressive with your family and you know my mom i live with my mom and my sister they they they've told me that i was horrible to be around during those two and a half months of studying because i was just under so much pressure and um i didn't even talk about my work experience but basically you have to pass the bar to be able to work if you can't pass the bar you're not going to get a job money you're not going to be able to pay your loans so really like it feels like everything is riding on this one test and california is insane when it comes to the bar california new york are the two hardest bars to pass uh the pass rate when i took it was 53 which is ridiculous like all the lawyers have studied all through college only half of them passed the first time i guess yeah yeah but you get to retake it yes you do get to retake it and when you're working at a firm they usually only let you retake it one other time though after that they kind of just rescind your offer yeah yeah yeah so i didn't talk about it but when i was i mentioned how you get a job in law firms in law school is through a process called on-campus interviews where law firms just go to the school and interview all the students and it's a week just of like back-to-back interviews um which is also another like stressful week um and then they offer you a summer position with the law firm and then you work in the summer and then they offer you a permanent position i was supposed to work the summer of 2020 and because of everything it got cancelled so i didn't get to work i didn't have any money coming in that summer um thankfully i was their diversity scholar so i had a scholarship so they still gave me that scholarship and they offered me a position post law school even though they had never worked with with me so you know they took a big risk um oh they got a good person and a good lawyer i'm sure you're a very good student you're a very good person too so i know you'll be a great lawyer yeah so that's how you get a job in private law firms if you're interested more in government work which would be you know prosecutor defender um that's you usually clerk with a judge during law school and then you just apply after law school grades aren't as important law school grades aren't as important for government jobs which i don't know why i feel like you know that explains a lot of people who have bad grades yeah um and then if you want to go into private it's called big law i don't know how familiar anyone is with uh law school and like job hunting process but big law like the bigger law offers bigger private law firms and those go through oci and are based mainly on your first year grades so your first your law school grades are probably the most crucial if you want to go into big law after law school i didn't know what i wanted to go into um i went and thinking i was gonna be an immigration lawyer and then mr d knows some personal things went down in my family where i kind of had to step up financially so that kind of like changed made up made up my law school path as well where i knew that you know i couldn't really be a government lawyer because i couldn't support my family at that salary so i kind of had to go into private practice so yeah you just kind of realize people who are doing things for good often don't get paid that's the sad part it's very sad yeah very very sad that's not how it should be you know it goes to everything you know teaching social work like we talked about everything is extremely underpaid for what i believe are the toughest jobs around um and sadly we're kind of happy any last questions anybody thank you very much for giving us your time you're you're great you're smart you're beautiful you're hard-working you're a great role model um thank you we appreciate it you know uh let me stop recording for a second mr frasier