Long story short, I had a really bad week which felt catastrophic. Im a first year finishing up my full first year. I am at a free market firm where we can get multiple different areas of experience during our first year before we have to “pick a major”. I was working in M&A, finance, crypto, ECVC, insurance, and other areas. For the past year I’ve found it incredibly rewarding to get the exposure and I was able to juggle all of the matters and was getting tons of positive feedback from the partners that I was working with telling me I was operating above level.
In the background I have a lot going on (getting married in early October and also lowkey had been interviewing at another law firm/ got an offer bc some partners left my firm and wanted me to go with them). I ended up declining the offer but it was very emotionally taxing to get to that decision. And then on top of that I was billing 10-12 hr days.
Suddenly this past week every single matter I was on popped off. In every single practice area. Deadline here deadline there. It was also my birthday early this week. Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday I had different closings which took up all my time. By Wednesday I had gotten 1300 emails from Monday. It was insanely overwhelming.
Because of my closings I ended up missing a deadline Tuesday for one of my practice areas. Felt really catastrophic because I just couldn’t get to it & it was a 180 page document I ended up pushing on a different partner that I was friends with to finish. I ended up talking to the capital partner in charge and he indicated being very disappointed. On another matter, the client decided to push for end of quarter close suddenly and an assignment I had on the back burner suddenly was asked for & I just didn’t have it ready. I ended up talking to partners and absolutely shedding some of my assignments/matters. Probably cried in front of 10-15 people. I tried to make it seem like I was trying to get coverage for my wedding but in reality some of the assignments I was shedding were putting the people who were covering me in a frantic spot, to be honest, with the end of quarter close coming up.
By Wednesday I was in the middle of a mental health crisis. I couldn’t form coherent sentences and my brain was moving at like 0.2x speed. The thing is for me, I HAVE to work in person in the office because my apartment is dark, so instead of staying home I came in looking like a zombie, which put my crisis on display and I feel like everyone is talking about my catastrophe (associates etc). I am an open book but I should have just kept it to myself. I’m still not recovered and am just shocked at how I feel like my career just completely flushed down the toilet in 1-2 weeks. Can a bad week really do this? I don’t know what to do. I have this fight or flight feeling that I need to leave my job and go to a different firm because I put my mental health on a very public display. I don’t want to show my face in front of the partners I disappointed.