Eli Cares About the NFL?

Let it be written--this is the first time in my life I have ever cared about an NFL game (and that includes the Superbowl).

I haven't blog-announced this yet so I should give you an update before I explain my sudden interest in the NFL: I was recently offered a clerkship with a judge on the Utah State Court of Appeals. This is VERY exciting news for me and something I had been keeping my fingers crossed for for a while. I will tell you the following not to brag or pat myself on the back but just so you can get a sense of how excited I am about this: clerkships with judges are often very competitive to get, particularly clerkships at the appeals level. This year they are even more competitive than usual (I had some judges email me to say they received around 2,000 resumes for 1 or 2 positions). I have been wanting to do a post-graduation clerkship for a while as they are great experience, look wonderful on resumes, open a lot of doors, and seem very interesting. A court clerk works directly with a judge in his or her chambers and helps research, write, and generally get a good view of how a court works and how a judge makes decisions. I applied with many different judges and the judge that ended up offering me this clerkship was actually the one appeals judge that I wanted to clerk for the most from the very beginning of this process so it really is an absolute miracle that it worked out (due credit should be given to the professors at BYU and the attorneys I work with at the AG's office who gave me some great advice, encouragement and wrote wonderful letters of recommendation).

Now, this judge has two clerks working for him at any given time. He has a new clerk start every January and September and clerkships go for one year. So this judge hired myself and one girl (the professor I work for gets mad at me whenever I refer to any adult as "boy" or "girl" and tells me I need to take her "becoming aware" class, which is taught once a year and apparently covers the words "man" and "woman") who is attending a law school in California. He left it up to us to decide which one of us will start next September and which one of us will start the following January (2012). We connected via email and initially neither of us had strong feelings one way or another so we've sort of stewed over it for a few weeks. After getting advice from various trustworthy sources (included Bob and Cathie, who have never led me astray yet, except for one time when I was 7 and Cathie told me that it's important to write in your journal because that way if you ever get accused of murdering someone, you can open your journal to that page and show someone that you have an alibi, thus leading me to a lifetime of consistent journal writing which from ages 7 to 12 contained many very calculated and detailed accounts of where I was at certain times of the day in case the motherly advice I was given ever came to fruition. She also used to tell me that she had an eye on the back of her neck but I still don't know whether that one is true. There was also the whole Santa Clause thing. But in my adult life, they've been 100% reliable), I decided that September would be a better option for me. The other clerk also decided that September would be better for her.

So to resolve it, I proposed that the outcome of our decision be based on tonight's game between the Miami Dolphins and the Chicago Bears (after having my sports savvy friend help me figure out what upcoming game might be close--this is something I never could have figured out on my own). She responded and chose Miami. So there you have it: if Chicago wins tonight, I will start my clerkship next September. My life's fate comes down to a football game.

~It Just Gets Stranger