Oh, boy. And I was trying to be so good.

(ok, so the text of this post didn't take the first time ... let me try it again....)

This year I'm sort of co-chairing my office's summer clerkship program. First time I've been this involved in it. I interviewed a bunch of law school students a couple weeks ago, along with another attorney, and we recently conducted a second round of interviews with about half of those students. I'm kinda excited about it, because I haven't been this involved with the clerkship program in the past; so, something new and different to do at work, and it's kinda fun to meet and talk to students. Seriously, we've had some interesting people apply; they actually kind of make me feel a little like an underachiever or something, a little boring in comparison, they've done so many cool things with their lives.

I think I'm a pretty good person to help out with the law clerk program in our office; I'm probably the youngest, or at least one of the youngest, attorneys in our office. So in some ways at least I think I can better relate to students than some of the older attorneys who've been doing this in the past. But I do have to remind myself to be good ... to not, say, take advantage of any cute young male students we might hire. Because, well, ahem, I may have done that in the past. Just a little. Ahem.

At the first round of interviews, I couldn't help but think, though, that one of the young guys totally reminded me of one of our former law clerks. A former law clerk who was also a cute young guy, who I may have, um, sexually harrassed just a little bit at work. (It was mutual though. That makes it ok, right? Sure. Yeah. Right. Of course.) But even though he reminded me of that former clerk, I was thinking to myself "I'm so not thinking of him THAT way, though. Oh no. He's just, you know, bright and interesting and stuff. That's all. That's why I'm interested. For totally professional reasons." Absolutely.

And when he recently came back for a second round of interviews, I was so totally in professional mode. I wasn't able to sit in on the interview from the beginning this time; rather I came in about halfway through, while he was talking to a few other attorneys. And I noticed that he seemed kind of nervous when I came in, the way he was talking to the others. A little ill at ease. Very unlike the last interview, where one of the things that had stood out to me was that he had a sort of dry, smart sense of humor, that he'd made me laugh a few times during the interview. So at one point when there was a pause in the conversation, I steered him back towards a funny story he'd mentioned last time, that had to do with his reason for deciding to go to law school (btw, only person I've ever met who actually had a funny story related to why he decided to go to law school), and I asked him a question about it and asked him to tell the others the story. (They hadn't heard it yet.) And that seemed to loosen him up at least a little, I thought. But it was still kind of hard to tell, since I hadn't been there from the beginning this time.

So after he left, I asked the other attorneys what they thought of him, and they all remarked on how nervous he'd seemed. "Until you came in," they all said.

Uh-oh.

I'm not saying there's anything there, or that I have any inappropriate thoughts or plans or anything, but I can't help but feel like all my good intentions might be just a little bit screwed. Because considering that I was already having, um, certain thoughts about him, and considering my past, well, it doesn't exactly bode well for my good intentions that all 3 attorneys agreed that he'd seemed really nervous in the interview ... until I came in. Hmmm.