One Month In...

Hi Everyone,

I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of your jobs (or the rest of your summer vacation). This will be my fifth week in New York working for CASES, an alternative to detention non-profit. For my first two weeks as a court representative I essentially shadowed the girl I would be replacing. She was an amazing mentor and for the first week I basically was her shadow and just watched everything she did (and had her introduce me to everyone she works with). Then, for the second week, she watched while I attempted to do everything she would do on a normal day. As a court representative, my normal day usually consists of getting to the office between 9 and 9:30 and heading up to the courthouse (my office is the floor below the family court) to wait for the cases that involve kids in the CHOICES program (or potential intakes or kids who used to be in Choices but are no longer in our program due to remand, step up to a more intensive program, etc.). Honestly, a large portion of my day is spent standing around, chatting with the officers and lawyers while I wait for my cases to be called. I bring a court report for every case that I go to, which essentially details the participant's record with our program (how many dates they called in for curfew, came to the after-school program and went to school). I usually spend the afternoon making these reports and updating various record keeping spreadsheets in our system.

I really, really like my job so far. I've only been at CHOICES for a month but I already feel like I know SO much more about the legal system (example, I had no idea what remand meant--it means detention!). I can say, however, that one of the drawbacks of the job is the somewhat isolated position I am in. Isolated really is the appropriate word since I socialize with people all day...but since I am a fair bit younger then most of the people I talk to during the day, it seems pretty unlikely that we will be hitting up the bars after work. Nevertheless, I am really enjoying my job and everyone has been super nice so far.

Living in New York has been great. While it is definitely different from Princeton (harder to figure out where to go on a night out and definitely more difficult to do laundry) it seems like a great place to live as a 20-something. I just moved into my own place on the Upper East Side (I was living with a family friend in Harlem until my lease started) and I LOVE my apartment and roommates. My main worry right now is being able to keep up with all of my expenses!

I hope everyone else is enjoying their summer as much as I am! Have a happy July!

Best,
Stephanie