Week 11: Why Would You Recommend This internship to your Classmates?: Treehouses

                As this summer slowly rolls to a close (just 5 more days left after today, so that means just one more week), the two prompts I’ve saved til the end are holistically reflective.  This one, particularly, is considerably presumptuous. 

                It’s a bit of a gamble, to set up the intern program with set blog prompts, and have one that outright assumes the internship will be recommendable on the other side.  That gambit, I believe, probably pays off 9/10 times.  Truthfully, it’s hard to believe there are all that many internships aimed at undergraduates that are better than Dwellworks. 

                But therein lies the rub.  My classmates are no longer undergraduates.  I have not been an undergraduate for 5 years.  My eligibility for anything but the legal intern position ran out 6 years ago. 

                At the end of the day, I can whole-heartedly say that I have enjoyed the internship.  I am thankful for the opportunity, for the people I’ve met and worked with, and for the skills I’ve gained.  But I don’t know if I would recommend it to the majority of my classmates.  But I say that, not because there is anything wrong with the internship, but because of the profound differences between what the internship aims to accomplish, and what most students entering their last year of law school are looking to achieve. 

                As I mentioned last time, Dwellworks legal department is combined with compliance.  That’s fine and it works for a company like Dwellworks- but it doesn’t lend itself to stereotypical legal experience.  There’s no filing motions, no going to court rooms, no real negotiations of settlements, etc. etc.  For me, that’s fine.  I spent the last year in a litigation setting and this was a welcome change of pace.  Indeed, it’s a good change of pace, and probably mirrors more realistic legal experience. 

                But it’s likely not what most of my classmates are looking for.  Top that with blogposts and an absolutely un-legal, undergraduate style group presentation, and it’s just not altogether an attractive experience, from the outside looking in.   But not all of my classmates are so cutthroat that they wouldn’t be interested. 

I would recommend this position to those who might not be all that excited about practicing law after law school (the amount of those is significantly astounding).  I would recommend it to anyone who has struggled to find their preferred practice field.  I would recommend it to anyone with a somewhat entrepreneurial streak.  There is certainly real and valuable experience in this internship, but it’s not exactly of the sort most of my classmates are looking for.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly how it ought to be.  Perhaps those who don’t want it are the one’s missing out.

-Zack

               

Week 10: Describe a project you’ve been working on that’s helping your department: Condensation

                Because our legal department is also our compliance department, and because our legal department is two attorneys, a paralegal, and a temporary intern, there’s far too much work to go around.  I never get to devote a lot of time to any one thing for too long before something new pops up- and I’m not even a full-fledged attorney yet. 

           

     But if there is one thing that I’ve spent the most time on this summer, it is Dwellworks efforts to implement legally compliant, cutting edge, contract-satisfying, and ultimately, effective and efficient data privacy and security policies.

          

      We hear the stories all of the time, almost weekly it seems: another new virus comes out, someone leaks sensitive files, the government is “spying on us,” Target (etc.) got hacked.  It’s an endless cycle, protecting sensitive information from those who seek to profit off it.  It’s easy to fall into feeling like it’s a battle we’re just gradually losing.  And the United States is woefully behind the times when it comes to protective laws. 

             

   In that chaotic environment though, Dwellworks (and everyone else) still needs to do business, and business is increasingly digital.  So I’ve been researching laws and best practices, trying to find out what other people are doing and recommending.  In the end, it’s all distilling down into policies and procedures we’ll roll out at some point (likely a fair bit past when my time here is up).  But it’s not as simple as copying other companies, even companies in our own industry.  The state of technology changes daily.  New technologies emerge, and any threat at all perceived is automatically real enough to warrant protection against.  What everyone else has done in the past is already at least a little outdated.  We have to find out what works best for Dwellworks now, and do that.

              

  So it’s tricky.  We’re working on it.  Cloud computing alone is going to vastly change how everyone does everything as more and more people adopt it exclusively.  My role has been to find out as much as possible and come up with steps to suggest we take.  We need to make comprehensive data security an integral part of how Dwellworks does business.    We’re on our way, and I’m glad, this summer, I could help get us pointed in the right direction.

-Zack

Week 9: Describe How You've Had Fun This at Work this Week: Musketeers

It’s well known around the office- Dwellworks’ core values: teamwork, innovation, integrity, performance and fun.  Those five things are a part of everything we do- or at least we strive to make it that way.

                

One thing I’ve learned though is that the most fun at Dwellworks actually comes from when the other 4 values are featured most prominently.  It’s true, we have a fun committee, and they do a great job lightening the mood and giving us well-needed diversions at the end of the week.  But no amount of snack time or themed parties can equal how much fun it is when a team is working together with integrity, to innovate with a high level of performance.  Maybe it’s just me, but there’s a certain sense of aliveness, a certain spirit that fills the room, when creative minds are working together at their highest potential. 

Perhaps that’s really the secret to the Dwellworks values: we don’t have to work very hard to attain each value individually: if we’re doing things right, they all happen at once. 

                

So take, for instance, our weekly intern project meeting; it’s almost always very fun.  But it’s not fun just because we tell jokes and get to take our minds off our regular work for an hour each Wednesday.  It’s actually not that at all.  It’s fun because we get to come together and brainstorm, and create as a group.  I have been so impressed by the members of my group.  Everyone has his or her own perspective, his or her own opinion, his or her own ideas, gifts, and background that they bring to the table, each and every week. 

                

For me, that’s really the most fun I've had this week, and honestly, it’s the most fun I have every week- whether we have whole-office snack time or not.  When we’re all really working together, collaborating, and working through problems, it’s not just living out the performance and teamwork values, but creating the “fun” value as well.

                

Somewhere along the way, Dwellworks discovered the secret to creating a productive office culture: it’s not about rules or goals or quotas (though plenty of offices use those to varying degrees of success): it’s about finding the right people for the right jobs and letting them be themselves.  Creativity bursts out in every direction when people aren't struggling just to fit in and feel like they belong. 

                

Somewhere between the hiring process and the incubated culture here lies an evolutionary sort of concept- that we all work toward the same goal, but we get there best by going at it from every direction.  That is true, ongoing fun-- so much more than anyone should expect at work, but barely as much as everyone should demand.

-Zack

Week 8: Give us an Example of How You’ve Experienced Dwellworks Culture: Something in the Water

Experience and culture are two illusive things to put into words. Even when you think you pin either down, you’re talking about facts and circumstances that add up into something, but don’t really define it.  They’re just incomplete parts of the whole; experience and culture. 

         

Take, for instance, one of my favorite “experiences” in the world: a tight basketball game, in the final seconds, when your team finds a way to win at the buzzer .  I can do my best to describe the way my heart races, the way the blood throbs in my temples, the way I go hoarse as the arena explodes in jubilation, the way the floor vibrates from jumping fans, and the dizzying glee that overwhelms you while you give high-fives to anyone with open hands.  But no amount of words capture what it really means to experience it.  You have to be there to know what it’s really like.

            

So too with culture.  In Tibet, wild yaks are holy and thus killing them is a crime.  But domestic yaks are the source of nearly all meat, butter, leather, and wool in the whole “province.”  Those are two interesting facts about Tibet. They’re parts of the culture.  But they don’t tell you what it’s like the experience Tibetan culture.  Even if I continue on, and tell you about eating with a knife as your only utensil, or harvesting rape plants to make canola oil, or the semi-wild dogs that protect their homes, or how you can’t sleep with your feet facing the Buddha in the bedroom.  All of these are true.  But you’ll never know what it’s like to experience Tibetan culture through merely knowing them.

            

So this prompt is not quite simply answered.  In order to describe how I’ve experienced Dwellworks culture, I have to figure out the best way to capture Dwellworks culture in words, and then pick an instance of experiencing it, and try to describe what it actually meant to experience it; all tasks tall.

             

What is Dwellworks’ culture anyway?  Is it the way people greet you in the morning, afternoon, and evening, no matter how much you’ve actually worked with them in the day to day?  Is it the way everyone will drop just about anything to help you out when you need a hand?  Or could it be the way we all gather for snacks a couple times each month, and share a collective break and catch our collective breath?  Or might it be, and I think it very well could, the quality you know you’re going to get when you interact with a Dwellworks employee.  I don’t mean quality work necessarily (though there’s plenty of that).  I mean quality of character, quality of the actual human being. 

              

It’s almost sinister how simple it is: Dwellworks hires people with a high degree of cultural fit in mind.  The right people for the environment do the best job in that environment, it stands to reason.  And it works.  Maybe it’s just because everyone fits in here that everyone is so great at being an excellent individual. 

                

Whatever the case may be, I think that’s the best definition of Dwellworks culture- an environment in which everyone treats everyone else with supreme respect and dignity simply because it’s the right thing to do, and because we are all wired to thrive in that sort of environment.

              

I’m sure everyone doesn’t agree on everything at Dwellworks.  Indeed, I know first-hand that that’s the case.  But there’s no amount of disrespect or derision in disagreement.  Likewise, even as an intern, I feel like my viewpoint and opinion are valued.  A lot of internships manufacture work for interns that could go undone and it wouldn’t make a difference.  Personally, and from what I’ve seen and heard from the other interns, that’s the opposite of how Dwellworks conducts its internships.  We’re treated like full members of the team, even if our jobs have an end date. 

            

This week’s prompt asks for a single instance, but it’s hard to pick just one.  I’ve been in countless meetings, discussing everything from employee recruitment to foreign taxes, and not once have I felt like I couldn’t contribute because I’m just an intern. There are times, in fact, where it feels like I’m the only one who really does what I do- I actually feel like the work I do would be missed. 

             

I don’t say all this to puff up our intern job descriptions, but to make a point about how Dwellworks treats people and how the people of Dwellworks treat each other: everyone is valued for exactly what they do.  No assignment is too small; no person’s story is worthless.  I feel like I’m part of a team of people that care about each other and the work that we all do.  There’s a sense that everyone here is invaluable to the company, and invaluable to the world. 

             

Dwellworks culture isn’t just about generating profits- it’s about generating an inclusive experience that makes everyone feel important and valued.  That’s no small thing.  I’m glad I get to be a part of it every single day at work. 

            

Because I do feel like I should pick one experience, I’ll describe one quick thing.  Last year’s legal intern, a guy I actually went to law school with (til he graduated last semester) still comes back for lunch every few weeks.  I think that fact says something about the culture of Dwellworks- it’s more than just a working relationship- it’s about life and working together, even when the work relationship ends. 

               

 There’s probably something to all of it that ties into the idea of relocation services: this company exists, at its most basic, to welcome people to new places and make their transitions easier.  That spirit of hospitality permeates everything we do here.  No one in the legal department ever really talks with transferees (indeed, if we do, it’s probably a bad thing.)  It isn’t “necessary” for the legal department to be imbued with the same generous hospitality as the destination services team.  But it is. All of Dwellworks is.  Mistake, strategy, or coincidence has created a culture here that is, in a word, irresistible.

-Zack

Week 7: Tell Us Something You’ve Learned through the Group Project: Broken Molds

            At the summer’s start, I was placed in the “Cultural Dynamics” intern project.  Basically, before the end of the summer, we’ll present on our respective topic to the rest of the company.  Our project aims to give associates a better understanding of how to interact with people from the other countries where Dwellworks operates.  Maybe, at the end of it, we’ll actually accomplish this. 

            The project is centered on a widely accepted (though deeply flawed) cultural behavior model invented by a man named Geert Hofstede in the 1960s.  Through a long process of surveys and relativity, he developed 5 (now 6) “dimensions” that are supposed to inform outsiders how a certain culture operates.   My portion of the project examines the findings for Canada.

             It was not long into the project though, that I completely jettisoned Hofstede’s model as anything but a rough and mostly useless starting point.  The most striking feature I've found about Canada is its deep diversity and respect for cultural differences: interpreting Canada via sweeping generalization as Hofstede would have us do,  is to profoundly misunderstand Canada altogether.  Perhaps it was the crass pop-modernism of mainstream culture in the ‘60s, but Hofstede’s models are a practice in monocultural reductionism and shaded personal ethnocentrism.  There might be some value in the models, if you can take them with a healthy dose of the realization that they’re relative and a tool, not normative and definite.  But that also means they rapidly approach total uselessness the more you find out about the intricacies of a country and the culture of the people who live there.  That, and the models are based on surveys from high-ranking business people in a given country.  To say they speak for the culture as a whole is an abject fallacy.  They are, at best, a picture of what business people want to see themselves as- not an imprint of the culture itself.

            All of this though is nothing in light of the cultural dimension’s worst facet:  one of the dimensions is defined as “masculinity-feminity.”  Let me say in no uncertain terms, that such a classification with those words and the suggestions they make is offensive, illusive, and dangerous.  There are no such things as m**culinity or f**ininity: just contrived concepts the patriarchy has perpetuated to remain empowered and denigrate women.  To define cultures as more one or the other is an intrepid route to misogynistic racism.

            But the project is not doomed by its flawed starting point.  Thankfully, we've mostly focused on more practical tips for doing business in our respective countries.  We've talked about differences in lingo in other English speaking countries (Canadians call corn dogs "pogos" and electric bills “hydro”).  We've talked about greeting Luxembourgish people in Luxembourgish instead of French or German.  We've discussed how hard it can be for outsiders to operate in Brazil, and Mexican telephone etiquette (best tip: don’t expect a call back).  I’m glad that’s where we've ended up.  I've glad we’ll be talking about history and shared cultural values more than we’ll be examining the boxes Hofstede arbitrarily flung people into based on incomplete and unsubstantial surveys of non-representative groups.  I’m thankful that, as a group, we had the intelligence and class to find out what mattered and what could be instructive, instead of sticking to the tools we were given that weren't doing anything for us. 

            I have learned a lot about Canada through this project.  I could list it all and satisfy the prompt for this post.  But I've learned much more about what it means to respect a country and its culture, and I’ve done that in the context of my research on Canada.  Truthfully, we can’t expect to understand a whole group of people without actually meeting them.  That’s my biggest takeaway from all of this.  But even attempting to understand a culture fully without that opportunity provides an excellent chance to put yourself and your own culture in context.  So often, we think of Canada as a proto-American nation-state, not quite British, not quite American, somehow sorta French, but not defined as anything in and of itself.  We’re dead wrong though.  There is real culture; real, unique, and extraordinary Canadian culture.  That’s true of every country in the world.  Dwellworks is blessed with relationships all over the globe.  The best way to understand the people we work with is through honest conversation and honestly valuing other people’s contribution.  Canadian culture is diverse, respectful, and welcoming- we’d do well to take a page out of their book. 

We’ll never approach other cultures perfectly.  Indeed, we’ll always do much better to approach other cultures from a learning posture, assuming we know next to nothing, and following the lead of our hosts and friends in other cultures.  I hope something useful comes out of our project, but if we end up giving Dwellworks a false sense of security, we’ll have been better off doing nothing.  It’s American arrogance that causes culture blunders (and senseless wars, death, diseases, and poverty); losing that arrogance is trillions of times more important and useful than simply knowing what non-representative Canadian businessmen thought about “power distance” in the 1970s.  Not only was that nigh on 50 years ago, but it was flawed then too. 

If you want to interact well in other cultures, admit your mistakes, ask for help, and realize that you don’t know anything.  That’s what I've learned from the intern group project, and what I’ll strive to take with me everywhere I go.

-Zack

           

Week 6: What’s the Biggest Adjustment from College Life to Work Life: Occam’s Razor

I’m not in college anymore.  I haven’t been for some time.  More than 5 years, it’s been.  But there are more differences between law school and Dwellworks than my undergrad experience and this job.  If nothing else, this would be a considerably different post were I still in undergrad.

               

Law school, at its most basic, is an intellectual bloodsport.  Every grade is subjective, based on a bell-curve with B in the middle.  If there are 20 people in a class and the lowest gets a 95%- sorry, that’s a C.  The A’s probably garnered some bonus points or something.  Actually, it’s not even that exact.  Done correctly, the professors just ranks every exam (and the final’s the only grade you get most of the time, with some slight shading for attendance and participation, should the professor be feeling generous) then does some basic math: the curve says only so many get A’s, B’s, and C’s, so the top so many (usually 2-7) are A’s, on down the line, with the biggest proportion at B.  It’s a blessing and a curse.  It’s not common that people actually do so well that A’s on a regular scale become B’s and C’s on the law school curve.  It is true though that many people’s worst grade in law school comes in a class that is, by class consensus, “easy.” 

When grades are based on competition, the environment, particularly the first year is harsh.  It’s not so easy to not worry about what everyone else is doing.  That’s the number one piece of advice upperclassmen have for 1Ls, but none of us really heed it, no matter how far along we are.  After the grades come out, they release ranks based on GPA, and all the “best” employers require a certain class rank percentile to even apply.   At some point, law school just becomes a caste system based on subjective class rankings generated from subjective GPAs.  They even publish a list of who got the highest A of all the A’s in a given class.  Sometimes, just existing in the environment is a challenge. 

Eventually, law students either stop caring or let caring too much get in the way of their outer life.  Deep down, I think both sets are a little bit of the other, and a little jealous of the other.  Either way, there’s a bit of Stockholm syndrome peppered in: we start to thrive on the edginess it creates.  It’s the context in which we best understand the day to day.  Law School does not prepare you for interactions with non-lawyers. 

    

At this point, I’m not actually sure I need to say what the biggest difference is between all of that and Dwellworks.  You probably work here too if you’re reading this (and if you don’t, props to you for reading the random blog of random interns at a relatively random company you have no association with). 

What’s the biggest difference?  My colleagues, even the lawyers, aren’t sort of my enemies too.  It’s not a MAD (in the cold-war sense) world in here.  Dwellworks is built on values and one of them is actual teamwork; like, really collaborating for the greater good of everyone as individuals- and not just the greater good of the company (ultimately it’s because Dwellworks, as a company, realizes the two are inextricably intertwined).  Much of the time in law school we’re somewhat torn: even as we develop real friendships, there’s the lingering specter of how you have to hope for the worst from your friends in order to achieve the best yourself.  It’s toxic, and it is the opposite of Dwellworks’ corporate culture and ethos. 

                

I’m not quite sure why law school is the way it is.  Perhaps creating a culture where it’s “kill or be killed” creates the best lawyers.   Or maybe it’s that some artifacts of antiquated days last longer than they ought in the legal field, because actual innovators rarely remain prototypical lawyers who have any say in how a law school is run.  Whatever the case, Dwellworks is a healthy environment, while law school rarely is.

                

The most competitive we ever get at Dwellworks is when we’re collecting school supplies for children who need them in Cleveland.  Sure, the reward isn’t a high-paying law job at a soul-crushingly large firm, but the worst-case-scenario isn’t loads of student debt and unemployability because your class rank wasn’t high enough either.

                

I think this prompt intended to get stories about how much earlier we have to get up and how much harder it is to get through an 8 hour workday at a desk than any of us realized.  Like Bilbo Baggins, I’ve been there and back again.  You’re either sitting somewhere and doing homework (possibly a desk) or sitting somewhere (definitely a desk) doing assignments.  The only actual difference at all is how you can be confident that you don’t have to work once you get home.  You even kind of get graded at the end of any job: your future references or promotions are going to be based on how you did.  That’s more important for your overall life, probably than grades in school could ever be. 

                

It is not as if we stop learning when we graduate from college anyway.  For many of us, that’s when actual learning actually starts.  Some of us just wear nicer clothes for our day-to-day after college.  But some of us went to Denison, so not even that's true.

-Zack

                

Week 5: Tell us Something New You Learned in MAGIC Training: Resonance

As an eventual lawyer working in Dwellworks legal department, customer service is not quite the same.  For much of my life, I’ve worked in jobs with very direct customer service: Wal Mart, Starbucks, the IT help desk in college.  For all of those jobs, it was a matter of providing quick, friendly, and effective service, according to a set protocol.  New situations popped up from time to time, but the majority of my interactions with customers were rote and predictable: someone wanted a certain drink I’d made a million times, or someone wanted wireless set up on their computer, etc. etc.  It was even more repetitive whenever I had the chance to be a cashier: ring up the items, take the payment, repeat, ad naseum.

 I don’t mean to disparage those jobs.  They were good jobs and I have a lot of respect for people with that kind of direct exposure to the general consumer public day in and day out.  Some of the most spectacular people I’ve ever met are Starbucks baristas. 

But the world is different for me now.  I’m getting more and more acclimated to life as a lawyer.  In law, we don’t really have “customers.”  We have clients.   Here at Dwellworks, working in the legal department makes the whole of Dwellworks, LLC our collective client.  Oddly enough though, that mostly doesn’t extend to the individual employees.  It’s literally for the legal entity known as Dwellworks pretty exclusively.    So it’s a different sort of thing, going through customer service training from this perspective, compared to everything it had been in my working life up to this point. 

MAGIC, the customer service training program Dwellworks sends every single employee through, is unlike anything else I’d been through in my other jobs.  In fact, it’s something a lot of lawyers should probably experience (but few ever will: attorneys are pretty confident that they can do anything, so firms tend to be very poorly run when it comes to business acumen and customer care: Law School teaches you how to pass classes professors have made needlessly difficult; (seriously, the material is tough enough without trickery and skullduggery in the exam fact patters) not how to run a business or care about people).  I’m glad that, even if I too go on to think I can run a business with no actual training, I’ll have had MAGIC while here at Dwellworks.  Indeed, if I ever have the chance, I’ll make every lawyer I’m in charge of go through it too.

MAGIC, you see, is not just “put on a happy face, the customer should at least feel like they’re always right.”  It’s “value the customer as a person, don’t beat yourself or the company up over things you can’t control, and come to a real solution for the real problem together.” 

I’m very thankful for the practical steps in MAGIC; how to answer the phone (greeting, name, department, offer to help, pick 3 but never four), how to deliver bad news (in delicious meat-metaphors: empathy, bad news, empathy-redirect).  But it’s the broader concept of the MAGIC training that I’ll carry forward in my professional life most.  Though there are words for the acronym, it’s a 3 part idea: relationship, task, relationship.  Who the person is will always be more valuable than the task at hand. The task is sandwiched between caring for people as human beings: even when things are not going well.  That’s how to forge lasting relationships for the benefit of everyone involved. 

Striving to show the customer you care about them, despite any bad outcomes that may be arising, is the key to all of MAGIC.  But more than that, it’s the key to being a decent human being.  At the end of the day, that’s what MAGIC distills into: being a decent human being to everyone you encounter.   Too often, that’s an idea of a goal we can’t actually achieve.  But the MAGIC training we went through gives us some tools to put people first when we’d not be inclined to do so.  I’m very thankful for it. 

So much of the time, Attorneys take advantage of the fact that you don’t have very many options.  Even the biggest corporations are stuck with selected counsel at a certain point in any transaction or litigation.  That’s why legal fees can get so outrageous, and it’s why a law office is often the most toxic environment you’ll find.  Lawyers get paid whether they care about their customers or not most of the time: just keep billing hours, even needlessly, and the checks will roll in, win or lose, customer satisfaction or not.  But I don’t want to be that sort of lawyer.  Thanks to Dwellworks and the MAGIC program, I don’t feel like I’ll have to be. 

-Zack

Week 4: Why did you decide to take the Dwellworks internship?: Or else to o’er leap it.

About a month in, it seems like a good time to reflect on how all of this began, and how it is playing out so far.

As I’ve mentioned before, I had no idea what Dwellworks was when I read the job listing. But it still stood out.  It asked a simple question: “Are you ready love your summer job?”   Though no one should willingly answer that question with a “no” you’d be surprised at how many of my law school classmates voluntarily subject themselves to jobs they know they’ll probably hate in pursuit of higher paychecks after we graduate and add an Esq. to our signatures.

But I’m not so much one of those people as I am a person in search of the most robust experiences from the limited days I’ve got on Earth.  I applied to Dwellworks both because I didn’t have to write a cover letter to do it, and because the listing sounded too good to be true.  I was ready to love my summer job, and I was unwilling to do anything else if I could help it.

That being said, I was somewhat apprehensive.  As great as the listing made it sound, 3 major concerns emerged in my mind:

1. This isn’t a law firm.  In the most traditional sense when it comes to legal work, you’re supposed to work at a big firm the summer after your second year so they can hire you on permanently following graduation, particularly if your grades are good enough.  If they’re not, you’re presumably supposed to grab a job at a not-so-big firm (or a government job) and hope they hire you long term. Dwellworks isn’t any of those options.  It’s a non-traditional step.  I’m not afraid to take non-traditional steps, but if there’s anything law students worry about, it’s getting jobs after school ends.  Taking a much less future-assured route isn’t typically encouraged.

2. It’s something of a traditional internship in the summer-before-junior-year-of-undergrad manner.  Obviously the legal intern position doesn’t fit that mold, but it does mean the internship includes some tailoring specifically toward people more than 5 years younger than me.  I am a few years older than the typical rising 3L, having waited 3 years post-undergrad to start law school.  But even so-  it’s a very different world, law school from undergrad.  I had no idea if I could or would want to work with a bunch of people who can’t legally buy alcohol, let alone who lack even bachelor’s degrees to this point.

3. Property management sounded boring, at least.  Because it’s hard to understand what Dwellworks does from the outside, PM was the only phrase I at all recognized on the website.  If my summer was going to be nothing but security deposit laws, I wasn’t sure how into that I’d be.  My path runs through the world of federal taxation, not small claims bickering.

Having fully fleshed out my concerns after I’d applied, I basically forgot that I even applied, and kept looking for other summer employment opportunities around Cleveland.  I actually applied to two other positions, but, as luck would have it, Dwellworks was the first that called.  As it turned out, luck had nothing to do with it.
My interview was barely about Dwellworks or legal work.  We mostly talked about food and all of the incredible places to eat around Cleveland.  You may have realized this from last week’s post, but that’s one of my favorite things about living in Cleveland.  It might not have been the most formal interview I’ve had, but it was probably the most honest.  More than a face with an impressive resumé, Dwellworks hires people who fit into the overall culture.  I knew within the first five minutes that loving my summer job was just the beginning of what it meant to work at Dwellworks.

It’s something of a gamble, to go into your last year of law school without future employment lined up.  But what is that really worth, if your future employment equates to 16 hour days including weekends?  There’s a difference between lacking life-work balance, and lacking life altogether.  If anything, the life-work balance at Dwellworks points more toward life than work; at least and especially as an intern.

But I didn’t just take this internship because I didn’t want to work as much as my classmates at bigger firms. That’s just a collateral bonus, because no job (particularly jobs defending corporate clients who have maimed innocent people- it’s a stereotype, but it’s far too often true) is worth 97% of your waking life.  No amount of money pays for the years of lost time.  Perhaps, for some of them, it’s exactly what they want to do, and they get the sort of rush a good job can give you from it. To them, I wish all the best.  But I know I know that’s not for me.

Dwellworks fits the life I want to live.  It should be and can be as simple as that, but it doesn’t end there.

Dwellworks is a young company: I’ve been out of high school longer than it’s been a company (as loathe as I am to admit that.  Time, it always passes).  There are unique challenges and opportunities for working in such a young company.  It’s not quite a startup anymore, by any means, but there’s certainly the sense that we’re all learning how to do this together.  I wouldn’t trade the experience of helping build a nascent company for much of anything else.  My initial impression when I first applied, that this would be a bunch of banal landlord-tenant research all summer, was dead wrong.

In the end, I’m even glad that I’m part of a more traditional undergrad-style internship program.  I just had my 5 year undergrad anniversary this past weekend: it’s been awhile since I’ve really engaged with people in that stage of life.  But there’s a certain freshness and excitement college graduates tend to lose, that seemingly every college student embodies.  I’m glad to get to work with some pretty outstanding people that see the world in a way I just wouldn’t (or perhaps can’t anymore).

I don’t know if I realized how boxed in the world becomes, when the only people you talk to are other law students and attorneys.  You start to see the world in terms of nothing but the law.  I don’t think that’s inherently a bad way to see things: indeed, it’s a skill one has to develop.  But the tragedy lies in believing it’s the only way to see things.  This summer, I’ve been able to break out of that rigid box and work with accountants, finance specialists, marketing students, and any number of other, non-law experts and students. It’s not the most traditionally elite law resumé addition.  But it’s hundreds of times more valuable to me, as a person and a burgeoning professional.

So why did I take this internship?  Because this is the only place in the world quite like it.  Who I’ll be at the end of the summer will be a better, kinder, more equipped person, for whatever my next step is.  Maybe it won’t be the big law firm world.  Truth be told, that’s likely for the best.

-Zack

Week 3: What's your Favorite Place to Eat Lunch (and why)?: This is what happens when you never give up

My favorite place to eat lunch in all the world is a small French café in Savannah, Georgia, called Papillote.  I think though, even if it didn’t say, the prompt for this blogpost is referring to downtown Cleveland, presumably accessible for lunch from Dwellworks HQ.

Luckily, Cleveland is one of the Country’s best food cities, and there is no lack of excellent choices, even if Papillote is a forbidding 11 hour drive from downtown Cleveland.  Longitudinally, it’s barely farther from the office than my house.  It’s the latitude that gets you every time. 

Since 25 hour lunch breaks are generally frowned upon, I’ll tell you about one of the fastest-ascending little places in Cleveland: the 5^th Street Arcade, on Fridays.  I haven’t actually had the chance to eat there since starting at Dwellworks, but it’s still feasible, so it’s still a favorite place that fits the bill: less than an 11 minute walk, fast service, and a unique atmosphere you can’t beat on a lunch break.

To understand the 5^th Street Arcades though, a little history is required. 

Back when Euclid Avenue was considered Cleveland’s Broadway by people who don’t live here, back when the Rockefellers and Carnegies you’ve heard of lived on the street in some of the most lavish mansions the Midwest ever saw, back before we detonated landmarks and installed parking lots, Cleveland was the fastest growing city in the U.S., right around the turn of the 19^th century into the 20^th.  It was a city on the rise for manufacturing and shipping interests, but also a growing cultural center. Many millionaires preferred to take their summers here over less temperate options.  But even when it wasn’t summer, Cleveland was a boom-town.  Many believed it was the next great American Metropolis, on its way to overtaking Chicago as the de facto capital of the Midwest.  All sorts of things happened and that dream was never realized.  But this city was tending toward it at one point in time. 

It was in that Golden Age that the three distinctive “arcades” on Euclid were created.  The modern shopping mall didn’t exist yet.  Shopping was essentially an outdoor activity: either in open air markets, or going from one small shop front to the next.  If you’ve ever spent a winter in Cleveland, it’s immediately obvious how inconvenient this would be, particularly for socialites who needed to be seen but couldn’t stand the cold.  All three arcades (the Euclid and Colonial Arcades are what is now called the 5^th Street Arcades, along with The Arcade, perhaps the most spectacular building most of the world never sees) operated on a similar premise: business wouldn’t die down so much in winter if shoppers could go from shop to shop while remaining indoors.

Somewhere along the path the prosperity, Cleveland fell off.  Contrary to the popular narrative, it started long before the steel mills started closing.  For whatever the reason, the economy collapsed and the arcades, all three of them, eventually closed down. Even today, The Arcade (not to be confused with its cousins across the street) is mostly an overpriced hotel/ghost town with a surprisingly open food court in the basement and a few decentish restaurants on the first floor. 

Before I moved to Cleveland, I would always go into The Arcade if I had time before a concert or Cavs game.  It’s a beautiful building.  I would love to think back to what it was as the premier place to shop anywhere between New York and Chicago.  But it was and is a little sad, to see it as an uncomfortable hotel lobby that, to this day, I’ve never seen more than 2 or 3 guests in at a time.  Little did I know though, during all of those visits, someone was reimagining the arcade concept across the street, in the Colonial and Euclid arcades.

Before a year or two ago, it looked like an otherwise abandoned building with a Radio Shack  and a Gyro shop (one of billions in Cleveland) in the front corners.  They tell me it’s not the world’s last Radio Shack, but I’m dubious on that.  Then a (overrated, overpriced, oversized, and over-dry) cupcake store moved in.  

If nothing else, the block west of the hallowed E. 4^th had a few new businesses on it and even a little progress is worth celebration in Cleveland.  But then the sign went up: “the 5^th Street Arcades.”  I’m not actually sure how long everything inside was there.  Before the sign went up, I had no idea it was anything more than a few stores I’d rather not go to and just another abandoned building.  Once it claimed to be what it was though, I ventured in. I’m now convinced that if you give me an hour, I will show you why Cleveland is coming back, without leaving that building. 

Between the two old arcades is a food court with 6 stands.  Two of them belong to one Chinese restaurant, two of them belong to one Indian restaurant.  One belongs to a Middle Eastern stand, and another a West African Vegan stand.  Food Court Eclecticism though, is only the beginning.

On Fridays, at least during the winter and early spring, the 5^th Street Arcades are home to an indoor farmer’s market.  “Farmers Market” is quite the misnomer.  It’s a bit more like what you’d expect along a side street in Provence on a Saturday morning.  There are a couple very small vegetable stands, but much of the farmer’s market is baked goods or dried herb vendors.  There are always two stands I can’t pass up: a French bakery with the best macarons in Ohio, and a homemade soft-pretzel stand.   There’s always live music too- it’s usually someone with a cello or a banjo, it seems.  Friday afternoons can be hard to get through, but well equipped with pâtisseries and pretzels, it’s something of a joy.

But before I can get my requisite afternoon snack from the “farmer’s market” I get my lunch in the food court: the Indian restaurant that takes up two stands is my typical choice.  It’s called “The Indies.”  They only have two employees: the married couple that owns the stand.  He deals with the customers while she cooks everything.  It’s not made to order as that would take hours, but it is always impeccably fresh.  Sometimes you’ll have to wait on your naan- she is constantly making more, with her bare hands, on the stove in the back.  It’s always a good thing when you have to wait on your naan. 

Their food is excellent.  A lunch special consists of your choice of three out of six curries: there are always 3 vegetarian (1 vegan) selection, and 3 chicken selections.  I typically mix and match.  They often have something of a saag paneer made with mustard greens instead of spinach- it’s absolutely delightful.  The spice level is just right for me (though that usually means a bit high for the average American diner), and for 6 bucks (7.50 with a drink) you’ll get lunch and maybe dinner.  Eating it in the shared food-court seating, just adjacent to the farmer’s market makes for a peaceful, musical lunch. 

Is there a better way to spend the lunch hour in downtown Cleveland?  It’s doubtful.  On the way back to the office, you can  stop by Pour in the eastern corner of the building: a steam-punk inspired ode to hand-crafted coffee serving the best joe you’ll find downtown (unless you’re from the East Side and think Ohio City is downtown and Hingetown is unequivocally a part of it, then Rising Star might make a claim otherwise, but I digress). 

Altogether, The 5^th Street Arcades are a brilliant place to have lunch and spend an hour.  The farmer’s market’s excellent afternoon snack options, along with Pour’s perfect after-lunch coffee make Friday lunch not just another meal, but the perfect set up for a great last push toward the weekend. 

All of that aside though, knowing that the old Arcades are thriving again is enough to remind any Clevelander that we’re all in the business of taking this raw rust-belt space of a city and using its past to redefine its future.

 -Zack

Week 2: What does your desk look Like: A Meditation

What does my desk look like?  Something like this:

I took this panoramic shot with my phone.  It only looks like the least impractically shaped desk ever- it only has the one curve near the keyboard, then it’s just straight to the wall on the far left.  I guess if you printed this off, cut it out, and taped the ends together, you’d be able to see what it’s like as I spin around in my chair.

Looking at this picture, it is clearly my desk, but that’s not quite what it looks like, thanks to Apple’s magical picture-taking technology.   It’s an accurate picture of my desk, through a less than accurate lens.   Or maybe just a different lens.  Who’s to say really?

So what does it look like?  It looks like a desk.  A pretty new desk, in a modern, low-walled, semi-open office.  In this picture it looks a bit like a stylish Z.  Maybe that’s for my name.  Maybe the other interns’ desks look like the first letter of their name when you take a panoramic shot.  But I doubt it.  That’s what happens when your name begins with a relatively obscure letter: you see it everywhere, because everywhere you see it, it feels like it means something.  But it almost never does, at least not intentionally. 

This picture (to the right) was taken using the same technique, in the same spot, but going up and over instead of around.  If you combine the two, you get something of a feel for what it looks like to sit at my desk.  The ceiling directly above my chair is the exact center of this picture. 

I realize I could have just taken a traditional shot of my desk and posted that with a lot of exclamation points to fulfill this assignment.  But I wanted to capture what it’s like to be here, in this place, for 40 hours each week.  The sublime irony of this assigned blog topic is that Dwellworks has one of the least desk-centric office cultures you’ll find.  It’s like asking a professional diver to take a picture of his towels.  They’re important and you spend a lot of time in them, but they’re not the center of the experience.  There’s a heart to the community here and its made up of people that happen to sit at desks for their day to day tasks.   Even from a purely physical environment perspective, I wouldn’t say the desks are the most important feature of the office.

Working in the restored department store/warehouse that Dwellworks calls home gives you the opportunity to see things as not what they are or what they were, but as a little bit of both.  Who knows what all happened here over the decades, at the Woolworth & Co. couched between world famous playhouses and one of Ohio’s most regaled jewelry stores.  Now, it’s a wide open post-industrial office-space, repurposed so we can have a place to work. 

That’s probably the easiest answer: what does my desk look like?  It looks like a place to work.  For as exciting as the décor around here is, all of the desks basically look the same.  Some are bigger than others (mine is decently large) but they all have the same furniture and the same cube-walls.  Some people decorate theirs (I haven’t yet, and might not), but they all look the same. 

They are all compartmentalized places to work.  They provide each of us our own space, to do the work we need to do.    But Dwellworks wouldn’t be Dwellworks if only the action at the desks mattered.  This is a great office to work in because people regularly get away from their desks to collaborate or engage coworkers on a personal level

Take, for instance, how low the cubicle walls are.   I like to look around throughout the day and say hi to the people that pass by.  Even when someone is working their hardest, there is always a spirit of accessibility.  No Dwellworks employee is an island. 

That’s why it’s a bit of a shame that the upper level of our office is a bit like a wasteland.  There are times when I come back to my desk and end up in the wrong row.  There are only 6 people in the handful of desks that make up my row. Downstairs, I would have neighbors on all sides.  Up here, I sometimes end up at the wrong desk because it’s nearly impossible to tell all of the uninhabited desks apart.  Sometimes the peacefulness is nice, but more often, there’s a measure of melancholy detachment from the rest of the office. 

 Despite all that, I’ve got my desk and it is a fine place to work, and will be a fine place to work for these next 50 days of summer.  I think we’d all agree though, that one of the best things about working at Dwellworks, is how un-central the desk is to our day to day work.

                                     Til next week,

                                                 -Zack

Week 1 First Impressions: The Man with the Mouse

 

They say the corporate culture of creating wonder and magic from everyday experiences is so strong at Disney, that new hires often leave voluntarily, if their own personalities and goals don’t match it.  I read that years ago, and I’ve always wondered what it would be like to work at a place so radically different that the typical corporate-drone type literally couldn’t survive.  The HR rep in charge of the Intern Program here at Dwellworks likes to say it’s a bit like Disney around here.  I’m not sure if it’s what she means, but I’m beginning to think she might be more correct than she realizes.

                And with that, the first week of summer comes to a close.  My first week interning in the legal department at Dwellworks HQ in Cleveland is already over, as quickly as it began.  It’s hard to believe, but there are only 11 weeks left of this experience, two of those shortened by holidays.  That means only 9 more full weeks, 53 days total, remain.  As with any summer, I’m sure it will go fast, but this one particularly so.

                This week we hit the ground running, as they say.  Before the end of the first day, I was working on 13 different projects and research assignments.  As of this writing, I’ve got 18.  There will probably be even more than that by the end of the day.  But don’t let the numerics of this whole process give you the wrong idea: I am far from overwhelmed; it’s much more like bounding from one exciting task to the next throughout the day.

                But all of that is just a broad description of my ever-increasing task-list.  I’m supposed to be writing about my first impressions from my first week working at Dwellworks.  And that, well, that’s something any task list can’t exactly capture.

                I wasn’t entirely sure what Dwellworks is or does when I applied for this internship.  Even by the end of the summer, I’m sure I won’t understand all of the intricacies of property management, destination, or valuation services.   But understanding all three of the major corporate functions Dwellworks performs would explain a very small part of what Dwellworks actually is, at least as I see it one week in. 

                You see, Dwellworks is more than just a dollar-chasing corporation seeking automatons to churn out ever-more-profitable work product.   It’s apparent that this company cares about its employee beyond their ability to produce profits.  It’s cliché to say that the best thing about any organization is the people, but here, it’s true in all its trappings.  Dwellworks is a company built on values beyond the bottom line: it really does seem to be a place driven by making the world a better, more enjoyable place to live.  Everyone seems to love it here.

For the next 11 weeks, it’s apparent that I’ll love it too.  For the next 11 weeks, I’ll get to know, at least a little bit, what it’s like to work at Disney.

-Zack