Name: Allison

Year: Senior

Majors: English Literature and Legal Studies

CFS Concentration: Legal Field Studies

I decided to participate in Chicago Field Studies after hearing extremely positive reviews from my friends and classmates, and talking to CFS representatives early on in my senior year. I knew I wanted to do something fun and different with my last quarter at Northwestern, but I wasn’t sure how to make the most of it. Rather than take a bunch of random classes, I decided that CFS would be a great way to help ease the transition between being a college student and a newly minted adult. I also thought it would be a great excuse to get into the city more and start to gain an understanding of what having a job is really like.

This quarter I have been interning at Davidson & Schiller, a small immigration based law firm. My duties include all kinds of case management tasks, such as drafting statements, indexing evidence, and client correspondence. I have gotten the opportunity to work on a number of different types of cases and have learned a lot about a dynamic and interesting area of the law. Though my internship is almost halfway over, I still feel like I have so much more to learn about this practice area, and am constantly interested and challenged by my tasks. I have been fortunate to have supportive and available supervisors, along with an extremely friendly and collegial staff to help me make sense of my assignments.

In some ways, I have learned exactly what I set out to coming into CFS, but I’ve also had experiences that I didn’t expect. As predicted, CFS has helped me learn how to communicate with my supervisors, ask questions when I don’t understand something, and effectively manage a different kind of work load. I also think it’s important as an intern and young professional to learn that you are a valuable contributor to your workplace, and that you are not burdening your supervisors when you ask questions or need guidance! I have also gained experiences I hadn’t expected through my CFS internship, such as mastering the art of rush hour commuting, learning how to balance my student life and my work life, and cultivating a pretty impressive caffeine addiction. Overall I would say that my experience has been incredibly positive and made me feel much more confident about my ability to not only find employment after graduation, but to feel comfortable in a corporate setting and be able to make the most out of my skills.