Mourning the Loss of My Career(s)

My whole childhood, I wanted to be an attorney.  My father is an attorney, and he would tell me stories about work and we would discuss legal issues on the news.  I had  a keen sense of what was fair, and I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney.  I thought it would be an honor to uphold the rights of the accused.  One long summer interning for the public defender's office  in upstate New York was enough to convince me there is no honor among thieves.  To this day, I respect anyone who defends those accused of hard and violent crimes, I am just too much of a 'fraidy cat to do it myself.   Representing  criminals in upstate N.Y. is one thing, where there was one or two violent murders a year.  Spending one's days at 26th and California in Chicago is quite another thing altogether.  Too many dangerous people fail to understand that, as a criminal defense attorney, you are on their side.  To the accused, you are just another cog that is part of the system trying to railroad them. 

Anyway, my dream of defending the underdog was not totally deterred.  I went to law school and enjoyed every minute of it (really!).  My first job as an associate provided another rude awakening to the dark side of our legal justice system.  I was hired to  protect union workers  embroiled in a bitter labor strike.  The company played dirty, and for the first time in my life, I was beginning to think the legal system had some serious flaws.  My second year as an attorney was spend in the Cook County Public Guardian's Office as a child advocate and Guardian ad litem.  Again, I was crushed to discover a system so broken, I didn't know how to do my job.  After surviving terrible abuses from their parents, too many of these same children suffered similar, if not worse abuses in foster care.  I had too many cases, a judge who wouldn't listen, and the nightmares to last a lifetime.  I decided to change careers.  I would help children on a daily basis as a teacher by giving them the skills to communicate effectively.

 

To become an English teacher in Illinois, one needs to have the requisite English background, of course.  I had only two English literature classes under my belt from my undergraduate days.  I knew I would need to go back to school (subsequently, I discovered I also needed a whole bunch of other non-English related courses to satisfy the Illinois high school certification board, including, among many other classes, biology, physical fitness, and psychology).  I returned to private sector law practice where I could make enough money to put myself through graduate school.  Even though I wanted to be a teacher, I never intended to give up my law license.  After all, I was good at it, even if I didn't like doing it.

After graduate school and a brief teaching career, I became pregnant.  I always imagined I would be home for my children, especially when they were little.  After all, that's what mom did for me, and I couldn't imagine childhood or motherhood any other way.  I stopped teaching just two weeks prior to the birth of my first child, Eva.    Soon after, I lost my teaching certificate.  You see, teachers today are granted an "initial teaching certificate" in Illinois.  This means that, in order to earn one's full teaching certificate, one has eight years to work four years on a full-time basis.  Since I was over thirty when I got this certificate, and since I knew I wanted to stay at home with my young children, my teaching career was doomed from the day it began.  Personally, I think this "initial" certificate thing is biased against women, because it prevents those of us who want to take time off for children from getting that full teaching certificate.  If I ever want to teach again (which I do) I will have to go back for more school.  For someone like me, with four years of college, three years of law school and over two years of additional graduate school for the Masters in Education (for those of you who know about this, I qualified for a Masters plus fifteen in the Niles Township pay scale, they refused to acknowledge my doctorate in law) the idea of any more time as a student in the classroom seems preposterous! 

Well, at least I had my attorney's license, until now.   Up until recently, I was able to maintain my status as an attorney by paying a fee to the ARDC.  This  worked out nicely for a stay-at-home mom like me.  I could do a little work for my dad and serve as an arbitrator once in a while.  Then, the continuing legal education people got their "hands" on Illinois.  The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that all attorneys must do (and pay for) twenty plus hours of continuing education to keep practicing law.  In my position as "mom," I don't have the time, the childcare, or the money to do these hours.  Nor do I want to do these hours.  With a heavy heart, I had to withdraw my license and declare myself "inactive".  After fourteen years as an attorney, I can no longer practice in this or any other state. 

Now, I am not a teacher; I am not an attorney.  G-d forbid, if should something happen to my husband, I would not be permitted back into these professions where I performed successfully.  To enter these fields again, I would need to take many many hours of classes.  I would need to pay for them.  I would need to find childcare.  Then, and only then, would I be allowed back into the workplace.  Although I haven't really been working for the last six years, giving up my law license feels like a nail in the coffin of my careers.

This post is an original to Chicago Moms Blog.
Sophia Leto (a.k.a. Moody Mommy) rants and raves at www.moodymommy.wordpress.com