When life throws you lemons, you make lemonade.
By: Mother Goose, President
After many batches of lemonade, the sweet and the sour, I look forward to the opportunity for another chapter of leadership and success in my life. How can I help my peers become the best they can for each other and for our community? Every day is an opportunity for another success… Let’s review some history so we can look forward to the future…
So I start mixing my rotten lemons and soon, they start getting a bit sweeter. Maybe I should quit… Quit my first big girl job? That is certainly sweeter than getting fired from my first big girl job. So here we are, forty-eight hours later and I’m unemployed. A mouthful of bitter sweet lemons but we have some promising fruit on the tree. Opportunities are always just around the corner.
Life is funny sometimes. I’ve spent my entire life knowing exactly what I wanted to do and how I was going to make it happen. Undergraduate education was only the beginning of my career. A double major in Criminal Justice and Political Science was everything step 1 on the road to Law school and being a lawyer. Now there’s a whole new tree of lemons to think about: Being a lawyer. How exactly does one go about “being a lawyer”? You become this beacon of prestige. The perception often held is that the simple title caries a certain respect that anyone will recognize. You immediately achieve the power to change lives with each simple decision that you make – taking a certain case or arguing a certain motion. You hold the power to decide the fate of a child, the sentence of a felon, or truly shape the life of a juvenile.
Now there is a lemon tree of the future; a young teenager trying to define right and wrong on a most basic level. When a small green one falls from the top and starts hitting every branch on the way down, how can you help to build the net that catches that lemon and helps it ripen to a bright yellow? Here’s one solution that I’ve found:
Your green lemon falls from the top and is charged with a crime. Quick, get the net: Anchorage Youth Court. AYC, a small, unassuming office in downtown Anchorage where juvenile cases are handled by other youth in those same teenage years, barely clinging to their tree branch as they strive to mature and find their own shade of yellow. This is where my story begins – the story of a green lemon clinging to the tree and searching for an escape. I had started to fall during the beginning of a bitter divorce of my parents – two people who should never have been together in the first place, let alone reproduced. But they did and we became the victims of violence. That rotten lemon tree was uprooted and burned a few years ago so it’s better to move on to the tree that saved this particular lemon from the fire.
Twelve years old. 2002. It seems like a century ago. The day things changed. This story begins one unassuming afternoon in a nonfrequented mall in Anchorage, AK. We pass a table advertising Anchorage Youth Court. I’ve never heard of this organization, but on the recommendation of my mom, I sign up to take the class. My first case is presented before Chief Judge Bill Edwards and I was all alone, representing a client who had shoplifted from a local grocery store. I can’t tell you what caught the attention of Mr. Edwards that day, but he wrote a letter saying I should be promoted that very day. The beginning.
My work in Anchorage Youth Court quickly became everything I ever wanted to do in my life. My sweet lemonade. Representing juvenile offenders who had made a mistake in their life, to help them discover a better path. The reward was only to know that I was a positive influence in the life of another troubled teen. Five short years later, I was President and Co-Chair of the Board of Directors. I lead an entire organization of youth each determined to help improve our world, one case at a time. Alas, as quickly as my career started, it ended. I retired from the program upon my high school graduation and began another step towards the top of the tree - college at Washington State University.
It was almost serendipitous when Dr. Mitch Pickerill presented Mock Trial to my Poli Sci class. I joined the team that next fall and met the brightest legal minds of our school. This program was centered on fake cases, contrary to the real life juvenile offenses I’d experienced before. But this was a different sort of tree all together. This was tangible court experience upon which a legal practice would flourish. History repeats itself sometimes… I was unanimously elected president of my team and had the pleasure of leading this group of inspiring individuals on our third trip to the Opening Round Championship Qualifier, a legal way of saying – nationals, round one. Another true honor in my life, and another sweet lemon for my future.
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