With apologies...

... to Sherry, weekend-related bloggery will have to wait til tomorrow. I now have 192 firms in my spreadsheet of graduate recruiters and I'm hoping this number will begin to go down tomorrow. It's come to my attention that deadlines have begun to whizz past again. I'm not ready yet to devote significant amounts of time to applying anywhere in particular, so I have a choice between allowing the jobs with earlier deadlines to rule themselves out, or perhaps rushing off a couple of applications over the next few days on a 'nothing ventured' basis. Other arbitrary methods for shortening my list include ruling out any US-based firm that can't be bothered to have a dedicated UK website, any firm whose application process or - can you believe it? - website isn't mac-compatible, and perhaps conceding that if I wanted to be a lawyer I'd know it by now. Removing the law firms would shorten the list by 35 at a stroke, and I must say the idea of not even starting a training contract til at least autumn 2008 is fairly off-putting. [Note to the uninitiated: I used to entertain vague notions of being a lawyer, mostly because it was one of the few careers I'd actually heard of (isn't it funny how children don't grow up wanting to be management consultants), but decided there was no point doing a law degree if I didn't know that I wanted to do it, so I didn't]

So, Lord Of The Rings, sleep, and a bright early start for more spreadsheeting in the morning...