From Nerd to Nursing

It's funny. Prior to law school, I felt that I was very successful in my job. I felt that I was competent and that I was striving for better efficiencies whenever they were available. I never once felt that my being a woman had any bearing on my ability to do that job.

Last summer I was pregnant, and though I went to the bathroom constantly and ate continuously, I never felt like I was treated any differently in my summer internship writing memos on taxpayer fraud. I was called a "nerd" by all who did not understand my passion for tax law. Life was grand. Well, the work was grand. The vomiting? Not so much.

This summer I am once again writing those tax fraud memos, and the work could not be better. It is my dream job. I could not be happier in the work I am doing, but I have a baby now. I need special accommodations now more than I did when I was pregnant. It is easy for a woman working at a desk to use the restroom and snack the entire time she is at work. It is less simple when a woman needs to pump milk and has to get home to relieve her mother-in-law, who is acting as de facto nanny.

I cannot stay late at work, which means I am missing out on all the networking opportunities, known familiarly in the legal world (and every other business) as "happy hour." I spend 40 minutes a day pumping milk, which means that I have only 20 minutes for lunch, which is fine, except when I really need to run an errand, like go to the Post Office. I could take a longer lunch, but then I would have to stay late, which I feel like I cannot do because my mother-in-law is waiting at home with the baby.

The worst part is that I am stationed in a cubicle for this position, which is to be expected, but when I want to pump, I must go into the office of another woman, who is working at another office for a while. Surrounded by pictures of her family and assorted viney plants she seems to collect, I attempt to relax so I can collect enough milk so that my son can get these precious antibodies that doctors keep going on about. On my first day, one of the bags of milk leaked into the refrigerator over someone's lunch. The woman with the destroyed lunch informed me so I could clean it up, calling it "a little gross," and thus creating my reputation as the nursing mother.

Thus, I am not the intern from Richmond. I am not the intern who came to law school because of tax. I am not the intern who knows the names of the tax analysts at various major papers. I am not the intern who worked in the same field last summer and thus has more experience in this world than the other interns. I am the intern who, on her first day, spilled breast milk onto someone's lunch.

It is these moments that make me feel like I have been sold a bill of goods. I have been told I can be anything I want to be. I have been told that I can have it all. I have been told that women and men are equal in the work place. I now know these ideas to be only half-truths. Women and men can often do the same job equally well, but if a person has other priorities in her life, outside of work, then there will be disparities.

Parenthood one of those priorities that can change your ability to do your job, and while mothers and fathers can share many of the responsibilities of raising a child, there are some that will always fall to the mothers (in particular breastfeeding and, you know, giving birth). For the first time, I understand why "feminist" women, with whom never much identified in the past, fight for equal pay. Mothers cannot possibly compete with fathers and non-parents in the workplace.

I know I chose to have a child, and of course, I am glad I did. I just wish I had been a little more prepared for the workplace. I wish I had been prepared for the fact that motherhood would so impact my identity in the workplace. Everyone told me that I would not be able to handle being away from my child, so I was prepared for that change. I was not prepared to become the nursing intern, and for once, I miss being the nerd intern.