You Don't Know What You Are Doing and That is Ok

Every pilot needs to land a plane for the first time.

So you just started or you are about to start your new summer associate or internship position. You walk into the office (or sign onto the Zoom). You are excited. You meet your boss for the first time. You are ready to go. Then it dawns on you.

You have no idea what you are doing.

How could you possibly complete the task you are asked to do better yet complete it effectively? The imposter syndrome kicks in. The fear kicks in. Maybe the flight response kicks in and you just want to pretend like you never even got this job in the first place and run.

But here's the thing. That feeling is completely normal. More than that, it's a requirement. After all, if you really knew how to do this job perfectly they wouldn't have hired you as a summer associate or intern to do it.

So now that you know you don’t know what you are doing here are a few ways that can help you succeed:

1. Remember Why You Were Hired. You were hired not for your experience but instead for your potential. The law firm or organization is responsible for training you how to complete the tasks. They hired you because they think you can. An analogy from sports is helpful. Professional teams rarely just draft the top college players. In fact, many of the very best college players don’t get drafted at all. Why? Because team’s want to draft players with the highest potential but still need top notch training over someone that has already reached their potential. Trust that you were hired because someone saw potential in you. Now you need to see that you have potential in you.

2. Remember You Have Other Experiences. Just because you don’t have specific experience does not mean that you have no relevant experience. No matter what you’ve done in the past or where you come from, you can use lessons from those experiences in your new job. Maybe it was working long hours as a restaurant server or camp counselor. Maybe it was a pre-law school career. Maybe it was being the oldest kid in a family of seven. Whatever your experience the key is to find ways to leverage _different_ experiences for the new experience you are facing.

3. To Become Experienced, You Need to Do Something Once. The great part about summer jobs is that you can get your “firsts” out of the way in the lowest stakes environment possible. Remember everyone who is “experienced” is someone who still had to do a task for the first time. There is a reason pilots don’t announce that they are landing a plane for the first time—but every pilot had to land a plane for the first time. Get as many firsts as you can!

4. Focus on a Growth Mindset Instead of a Success Mindset. You are coming from a life of education where success is measured by grades. But in a professional setting, success is much harder to measure. Sure doing good work that makes your supervisor’s life easier is one metric of success. But especially in your internships and summer associate gigs, better metrics of success are how much did you learn, how many people did you meet, and how many experiences have you had.

5. Asking Questions is a Sign of Strength, Not a Sign of Weakness. I hope to write more about asking questions in a future edition of SSA, but for now I’ll just emphasize that because you don’t know what you are doing your supervisor expects you to ask questions. Again, if you had all the answers, they probably would be hiring you for a different job. You don’t know what you are doing. That is why asking questions is a critical part of success.

I hope that this advice gives you confidence in your lack of knowledge and experience. Once you see that your newness is a strength and not a weakness you can set yourself up for success.

Talk soon,

Jonah

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