I really didn't want to write this column. I put the task off forever and ever just because it would be so humbling to write. Thus far, my columns have been upbeat and positive, but I can't say I'm feeling very cheery right now. You see, I don't have a summer job.

After all the abundance and decadent chaos of on-campus interviewing, I've come away empty-handed. All that energy, all that hope -- I must admit I really thought it would pay off. Alas, I've gotten two rejection letters, and a confusing silence from the rest of the firms that called me back for final interviews. It has been so long since I've heard from them that I've written them off as rejections.

I haven't really asked around amongst my peers, but it feels like everyone in the world has a summer job already except for me. Maybe it's because I am always working in the law review office and people there are often lamenting the difficulties of choosing between their 800 offers. Maybe the people who don't have jobs yet are quiet about it, as I am. I find my unemployment embarrassing, and frankly I'm humiliated and dejected about the whole thing.

What a way to go into exams, right? Because they're coming, you know. All of a sudden, November is disappearing faster and faster, like the last grains of sand in the hourglass, suddenly gone. Time seems warped to me, an East Coaster transplanted to Southern California. Last week it was almost 90 degrees every day; it still feels like August. It still feels like I have plenty of time before the chill of exams. But the chill never comes, and the exams do. And with the distractions of the interviews and call backs and checking my messages every ten minutes, not to mention thinking up a note for my journal and planning events for the International Law Society that I preside over and preparing the brief for Jessup Moot Court, my regular classes -- the ones with exams -- seem to have fallen to the wayside.

Where last year my class work stood out in bold on my to-do list, taking top priority, this year everything else seems to have thrust itself into the forefront and the actual point of law school is overcome by the periphery. I seem to have lost focus somewhere along the way.

I am so grateful to be going home for Thanksgiving, back to the frozen glory of a New England winter. I hope, amid the family and the food and the fireplace crackling, that I'll hit my mental "reset" button. I hope I'll refocus my energies onto my exams, my classes -- the real priority of my law school experience. I hope I'll muster the energy to begin the job search again, this time pro-actively paddling my own canoe rather than drifting along with the current of the on-campus interview program. But all I can really promise is that I'll eat too much at Thanksgiving dinner, I'll relax in the comfort of my home and my family, and I'll be thankful that the biggest problem in my life is only that I didn't get a summer job out of my first few attempts. From that perspective, it doesn't all seem quite so bleak.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Annika K Martin is a second-year law student at the University of Southern California Law School in Los Angeles, CA. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University. She likes Swedish furniture, German cars, French films and Indian food.