The Job Search

My brother Weston was in my opinion my most interesting sibling growing up. He took the most risks, was the most passionate, the most adventuresome, the most interested in other people and the most curious. Growing up, Weston would do the jobs that no one else wanted to do. When someone lost something in our oftentimes cluttered house, Weston would surprise everyone by coming up with the lost item. He eventually earned the title of "Mr. Find-it." He also seemed to enjoy fixing things. Hence the other title of Mr. Fix-it. By praising Weston with such titles, I'll admit that we older siblings might have influenced him to do things in our favor more than we deserved. But Weston was the type of brother that probably wouldn't have even cared.

Weston was also never shy about anything. He would literally do anything, even if everyone else around him thought he was weird. When we were all pretty young, we would watch "Land Before Time" a lot. In the opening scenes of that movie, different sized bubbles flash across the screen. We developed a tradition whenever we'd watch this movie to exaggeratedly say, "Whoaaaa!" whenever the big bubbles would flash across the screen. The bigger the bubbles, the louder we would exclaim "Whoaaa!" This tradition is all fine and good in the house, but in the Scera movie theater it is a different story. As we were sitting in the theater, watching the introductory scenes, the bubbles start flashing across the screen. In a moment when the bubbles were truly huge (with the theater sized screen), Weston could not help himself and literally shouted "Whoaaaaa!" to a very-much silent room full of people. The rest of the audience did not seem to be as equally impressed with the size of the bubbles. Weston would do things without really caring about what others thought of him. If we were at a store and we wanted information about something, but were too shy or hesitant to ask, we would get Weston to do it because he never got embarrassed. After a while, I think he caught on to our tactics and was less willing to go along with our enticements. But after explicitly giving him the title of "the one who never gets embarrassed," it became an honor to live up to such a title for Weston.

When I turned 16, I wanted a job. Our family was poor and I wanted money. My brother Graden and I briefly tried a morning paper route. I enjoyed driving the car (as all 16 year-olds do), but the schedule of waking up so early was awful. I had no idea how to get a regular job. My dream job Target would never get back to me. Other nearby jobs also did not show me any interest. Then, my brother Weston surprised me big-time. He said that he saw one of those trailers on the side of State street with a big Carl's Jr. "Now Hiring" sign. My brother approached the general manager, who was inside the little building, and said that his older brother was looking for a job. (See? The dude truly never got embarrassed. He just did things without thinking twice.) The manager was most likely taken aback by this 11 year-old signing his brother up for an interview. However, after I talked on the phone with the manager and later interviewed with him, I got the job, which turned out to be really good for me.

Now, as I'm finishing up my 2nd year of law school, I'm already feeling anxiety about finding a job. I've had a lot of great jobs since Carl's Jr., and I'm pretty well-qualified in my opinion. You wouldn't think that I would be too concerned about securing good employment, but the economy has never been this bad in all my life. This past year, I have seen so many well-qualified friends and family struggle with finding a job.

Now my graduation date is still a ways away and I'm going to stay optimistic, but I kind of wish Weston was in Boston looking for a job for me.