Ain't See It Coming

TL;DR I’m going to Berkeley Law in August 2023, from August 2022 - July 2023 I’ll be in NYC working for The Posse Foundation as a Weil Legal Innovator, and potentially working part-time at my current gig.

You’re probably wondering what is going on. Honestly, I am too. I just finalized what I was doing 48 hours ago. I’ll explain what I can. Truthfully, I reluctantly applied to Berkeley. It was the last school I applied to. My STEM background made me feel like I would be a stereotypical Berkeley student, and I dislike California. It’s expensive and susceptible to all sorts of natural disasters. Those who know also know that I dislike snow and cold weather, so moving to New York City wasn’t ideal.

So how’d we get here? I’ll explain.

When I started applying to schools, my goal was to end up at a top 20 law school, ideally around 16th and 17th rank for as cheap as possible or go to Howard. I targeted this ranking due to learning that law is very prestige-driven, and where you go to school matters, especially outside of the top 14(T14) or so schools. I felt like the schools on the fringe of the T14 would allow me to get my foot into the door in whichever direction I decided to go, and I felt that I would get substantial scholarship offers from these schools. The only caveat was Howard, which had strong outcomes for its students depending on where you were in the class. I wouldn’t mind working a bit harder to get some of the opportunities afforded to peers at others; I come from Fort Valley. I’m not new to this; I’m true to it.

Picture from Spivey Consulting

I realized I didn’t want to go to school in Boston, so I didn't apply to Boston University, but I did apply to UT-Austin and Washington University. I got into both, and Washington University offered a substantial scholarship, so I honestly thought when it was all said and done, I’d end up at WashU.

However, I wanted to give each school I got into a shot and tried to attend as many events as possible at my prospective schools. I went to admitted student events at lower-ranked schools and higher-ranked schools. I was skeptical and uninterested in paying a hefty premium to attend a higher-ranked school. Yet, when I started to receive my financial packages from some of these schools, they became financially feasible to attend.

The Weil Legal Innovators Program caught my eye in an email blast because it allowed you to work at a nonprofit for a year, receive a scholarship to your law school after your year of service, and interview with the firm for a Summer Associate position. Working on complex issues that would make a difference in people’s lives for a year seemed like a great opportunity, plus I could further cement if law school were right for me. Plus, I wanted to try out working in a nonprofit space to understand if it was something I was interested in doing and how I would adjust to living on a much smaller salary.

The kicker was that if I were to get accepted into the program, I would have to go to one of their partner schools, which for me would have been Georgetown or Berkeley. I told myself I would tour both, and if I liked either school, I would think about applying to the program. I enjoyed both schools, and it was financially feasible to achieve either, so I began to look at applying to Weil more seriously. As I looked through all the nonprofits to see if I would apply, Posse stood out. I spend a substantial amount of time at work helping with outreach to increase the number of black and brown people in Tech and working on a nonprofit board with a similar goal. Thus, having a chance to “develop a structured pipeline and professional development curriculum that guides Scholars interested in pursuing legal careers and prepares them for success.” was something I was eager to work on. Thus, I threw together an application at the last minute and got my grateful recommenders(Thanks Mike and Mr. Manning) to submit letters on my behalf.

I told myself I’d only do Weil if I got Posse. If not, I’d go to Washington University or whatever school I wanted to attend.

After touring almost every school I was accepted into, I basically had it settled to Georgetown or Berkeley if I did Weil or Washington University in St Louis. I felt like I could succeed at each school, and the difference would be marginal. Howard gave substantial money as well, but it was a conditional scholarship, meaning I had to always place in the top half of the class. I didn’t want to risk losing all of my funding if something happened to me or I had a bad semester. I still have CDEP PTSD. (Let me shoutout Northwestern, who had some amazing Black folks as current and future students, they were my favorite group of folks)

I submitted for Weil in March but wouldn’t know if I would advance to interviews until April. During that time, I decided that since Berkeley and Georgetown were fiscally almost the same cost, I would go to Berkeley if I did Weil. While I prefer DC to Berkeley and assume I’ll be on the East Coast long-term, I think Berkeley was a better fit for me. Georgetown is almost twice the size of Berkeley, and if push came to shove, I’d like smaller class sizes. More importantly, I felt Berkeley was the best place to learn how to infuse my tech background with the law and truly innovate the law. On top of that, Berkeley has strong community service projects, and I felt that I would get more hands-on lawyering done there. So while I know I have minimal interest in California long-term, I could do 3 years there if it was best for me.

April rolled around, and I advanced to Round I interviews and, subsequently, the Round II interviews. At this point, Posse told me if I were chosen, I would have to move to NYC because Posse was a small team that was going into the office in a hybrid format. (I also interviewed at the National Urban League, and they too were in NYC) Deep down, I was hoping it’d be remote, so I wouldn’t have to move, and honestly, I had a nice routine going in Macon.

Tuesday evening, I received the notification that I had been selected for the Innovators Program and placed with Posse. I signed my offer letter on Wednesday and committed to Berkeley Law. I haven’t thought much about NYC, I’ll do that later, but I’ll move there in August 2022 and be there until July 2023. I’ll start at Berkeley in August 2023.

What about your current job?

Interestingly enough, I think I’ll try to stick around in a part-time capacity until August 2023, which means I’ll likely be swamped. We’ll have to figure that out as we go.

I haven’t figured out much past this. I’ll be in Austin full-time from mid-May until I move to NYC in August.

I want to thank everyone who helped me get here and my amazing support system. I love you all, and I appreciate the support.

We’re just getting started :)

Takin' flights, I've been tourin' the country (Uh-huh)
Check the schedule, I'm goin' to London (I'm gone)
Always knew I was gonna be somethin' (Uh-huh)
But I still ain't see none of this comin' (I'm on)