@DonnaL, I am so happy you came back to share this news.
I know you feel lucky, but they should be celebrating more. They are so lucky to have you. You will make a difference!
Congratulations! That is really wonderful news on many levels!!!
I’m very happy to hear such great news.
Hello Donna!
It’s so great to hear from you. Thank you for posting. I am sorry to hear that you’ve gone through some difficult years without employment.
But now…congratulations on being the perfect person for the perfect job. What a powerful and impactful advocate you will be.
Whenever you post, I remember the photo you once linked and I think, “She has such great hair.”
I hope that your son is doing well and that you will thrive and be fulfilled in this new position.
My very best to you.
Oh @DonnaL I am so happy for you. Not just a job but a dream job. I bet you are pinching yourself. Congratulations
Great news - congratulations!!
Awesome news. I’m sorry you hear you have had a rough three years but I’m glad that’s behind you. Best of luck in your new position. You’re going to knock them dead.
Will you be involved in any way with fighting Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military? That should be an interesting legal battle.
Congratulations. Best of luck with the new job.
Congratulations on your new position. It certainly seems that you will have the opportunity to do a great deal of societal good, which is much more than most attorneys can say about our jobs. Best of luck…
Nothing like a job after a period of unemployment to make life feel better. Congratulations!
Congrats. Nice to hear your voice again. And how is your son?
Fabulous! Wishing you continued success!
This is wonderful, Donna. I know how incredibly soul sucking long term unemployment can be, and I am very glad that you didn’t give up. This sounds like the perfect job, and they are seriously lucky to have you!
Congrats Donna!!!
Yesss!!! Congrats @DonnaL . This is what you call a perfect match! You’ve got this and you are gonna rock it! Hope your son is doing well.
I apologize for not responding to each of you individually, but thank you all so much for your very kind words. I really appreciate them. Part of me still finds it difficult to believe that I finally found any kind of job at all – let alone this one – at my age and after so long a time, but I guess the press release is reasonably convincing evidence that it’s real! And yes, I’m very much looking forward to working on cases in an area that has such personal significance for me. Especially because they’ll all have such great importance in human terms and in terms of their effects on people other than the particular litigants – something that definitely wasn’t always true for commercial cases. The responsibility is somewhat intimidating – “who, me?” – but I will do my very best.
I probably won’t be able to comment much anymore, here or elsewhere, on trans-related issues, though – especially if they relate to issues arising in any of the cases on which I’m working. But that’s a small price to pay, I think!
The financial remuneration certainly won’t approach what I once made (although I was never a partner, and worked at a relatively small firm for the last 20 years, so I never made that much to begin with, in lawyer terms!), but it’s all in an excellent cause. And it’s far better than the alternative – it far exceeds the grand total of about $11,000 that I made over the last 3+ years doing legal work part-time on an hourly basis! I doubt I’ll ever recover financially from having to use so much of my retirement funds (at least I was old enough not to have to pay a penalty), and also having to run up a high credit card debt, just to survive over the last 3+ years, but there’s nothing I can do about it now, and I’m going to try not to think about it too much, or let it detract from my happiness (and relief) at finally not having to feel completely useless to the world, as if I should just give up and dwindle away somewhere.
A few of you asked about my son. He’s 27 now already (hard to believe!), and doing fine. He’ll be getting his master’s in art history in a couple of months – it took him longer than the standard two years, for various reasons including, as he’s told me, his worries about me and how extremely depressed I’ve been – and then will be applying to various Ph.D. programs. Some of them all the way out in California, to my great dismay, although I’m trying not to show it too much! By the way, the class he taught solo at his university this summer, which I wrote about here a while back – a survey class on American art since World War II, twice a week from 6-10 pm – went quite well, although it required a great deal more preparation than the actual class time. At least he’ll have all the notes and outlines and powerpoint slides he prepared, if he ever teaches the subject again! And yes, he gave breaks every class, as you all advised, to get through the four hours.
He’s also going to Germany for a couple of months later in the fall (he’ll mostly be in Munich) to take some classes, including advanced German to try to perfect his skills in that. Taking advantage already of our new German citizenship! And then we’ll both be going to Baden for a week in late February for the ceremony installing seven Stolpersteine in front of my mother’s family’s home in the village of Sulzburg on the edge of the Black Forest – where the family had lived from August 10, 1724 until October 22, 1940 – to commemorate the seven members of her immediate family who perished in the Shoah. I already asked for that week off before I accepted the new job, and was told it shouldn’t be a problem.
Once again, many thanks to all of you.
Wait – what!!!
See http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20590833/#Comment_20590833 and http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20696336/#Comment_20696336 for an explanation. The actual ceremony at the German Consulate across from the U.N. building, in which we were presented with our Einbürgerungsurkunden (citizenship certificates) – conferring German citizenship and, ipso facto, EU citizenship upon us – took place on August 10. Our German passports should arrive in a few weeks.
I didn’t actively hate the new photo I had taken for my German passport – something very unusual for me – so I also sent it to my new employer when I was asked for a photo they can put up with my bio on the website!
What wonderful news. You will be able to have an impact in these times that are pretty grim for the transgendered community.
Please let us know how your journey to your ancestral home goes!
Fascinating. Thanks.