Jury duty. Privilege, or pain in the *ss?
Monday was my first day performing my “civic duty,” a.k.a. jury duty. It was also my first time being summoned, and quite frankly I was dreading having to be involved in something so official and intimidating. I complained to my sister the entire night Sunday, asking her to “pray for me at 8AM tomorrow so that I won’t actually be picked and I can just go home.”
I have a weird fear of doing something that I’ve never done before. If I have a post office I always go to, I would HATE going to a new post office. If I have a train station that I’m used to boarding at, and I happen to be closer to the stop next to it, I will walk the 10 minutes back to my usual stop to board the train, which will take me back past the stop I just came from. Yeah. I hate it that much. So can you imagine my discomfort at the idea of fulfilling jury duty for the first time?
But I went, and actually…it’s not bad, not bad at all. Oh, except the fact that out of all cases, I got one that the judge said is “longer than usual” and is going to take almost a month to finish. Lucky me.
So,
Good thing #1: I ran into an old friend, who was also in the jury pool, that I hadn’t seen in years. He worked at the high school where I was a student. I was president of a student committee that sometimes had to work with the adult staff, and he and I became good buddies through this student-staff cooperation.
Good thing #2: I actually find jury duty quite interesting. Apart from studying law, how else are you going to get a chance to see the workings of a court session other than being selected to sit in the jury box? The feeling of importance when you’re about to enter and the court officer says, “jury is entering, court rise,” and everyone stands in recognition of your arrival, isn’t too bad either =)
While a couple of good things came out of jury duty, and a friend of my sister’s said I should switch my major to law, I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. Sitting in on one session is plenty for me; I have no interest in law.
Most of me wants to say that jury duty is a privilege, but that would be a lot easier to say if my case was, say, a day long, or 3 days tops, like most people’s are. But a month?! Really…c’mon now…
I haven’t had the “privilege” of being called for jury duty yet, but I dread it, just like you did. I’m not a fan of doing completely new things either– I always overanalyze the situation beforehand and stress myself out about it. Ugh. Life problems.
I like the sarcasm 😉 I just try to imagine myself doing the new thing, and I try to plan out how I’m going to not be a total spazz while doing it. My plan usually fails.
Exactly! I try to plan it out exactly in my head, which normally never works because I don’t know how anything will actually turn out– what a stressful process. One of the things I definitely need to work on getting over!
Changing your major to law is a good way to get out of jury duty.
That’s good to know =) Nevertheless, I think I’m good. I’d rather bear with it than switch my major, which I love, to get out of it.