Reply #5: Lucky me [View All]

[OldLeftieLawyer]

I managed to get myself kicked out of three undergraduate schools - one of them Ivy League, no less - and that left my parents kind of ::: ahem ::: unhappy. So, I was on my own, and that made for adventures I'd never have had otherwise. I wasn't ready for college, didn't especially want to go, and it showed.

Later, I got through college and law school in record times, and everything worked out really well there.

My first lawyer job was with the Federal government - Department of the Interior. I was working for a nutjob, I quickly realized, and, within a month, he fired me. Shocking - you bet. There were no jobs for women back then, not without real connections, which I never had.

So I went out on my own. Practiced law from the front seat of my car when I had to. Banks lent me offices if I did enough real estate closings, and a secretary at the law firm that did the most settlements taught me how to do them, whispering to me, "I'll do anything to help a woman get ahead in this business."

Little by little, I worked my way into an office of my own. Then I was able to hire a secretary. Then a paralegal. Then others.

Then I bought the building.

That was just the beginning.

None of this would have happened if I hadn't partied like the best wild woman in the world when I started college.

It taught me to take risks. And that's something you don't learn without a shitload of failure to fertilize your courage.