A Part-time Path to Full-time SuccessJennifer Cullen '06By Susan VogelSome people spend years searching for something they are passionate about. Jennifer Cullen '06 has the opposite problem.
A native of Newark, Calif., Jennifer Cullen enrolled at U.C. San Diego to pursue her first passion: working with the elderly. Growing up, she had a close relationship with her grandmother, Emily Denis, who resided next door and lived to age 97. This led Cullen down a career path of providing social services to older adults. During college she volunteered at a senior outreach center. Upon graduation, Cullen earned a Master of Social Work degree at San Jose State University and began a 10-year career as a geriatric social worker, which included working in nursing homes, dementia facilities, and a senior citizen center. As she worked with seniors and their families, she found one area in which she was regularly unable to help: “Anything having to do with legal issues was outside the scope of my knowledge.” Consequently, law school started to sound interesting, particularly since she considered herself “a total book nerd.” She spent several years contemplating whether to enter law school before taking the plunge. Her most significant reservation was the cost. Over the years, her grandmother’s favorite advice was to tell Cullen and her two brothers to “pay yourself” first, meaning “before you spend a dollar on anything, save an extra dollar in the bank.” Santa Clara University’s part-time program provided the ideal path to reach her goals yet follow her grandmother’s admonitions. “It felt much more comfortable not having to jump ship from my job and income stream—it made it easier for me to commit to attending law school.” Though working and studying continuously for almost four years was “a bit of a challenging undertaking,” she feels it was worth it. “I was able to minimize my debt, become exposed to and to learn a ton of fascinating information, and come out the other end with an opportunity to change my career,” she says. Cullen began law school with an eye on elder law and estate planning, but kept in mind that “for the price tag I didn’t want to limit myself and instead set about exposing myself to everything under the sun. At every turn I was taking another class that was really engaging and really interesting to me.” Still interested in estate planning, she volunteered as a legal assistant for senior adults in San Jose. Cullen found that at SCU, the first private school she had ever attended, she got “an extra layer of care.” Juggling the competing priorities of a working student presented ongoing challenges, which SCU’s administration regularly helped to resolve (including once rescheduling a Torts final because of a work conflict). “My experience was that the faculty and staff really take an interest in you,” she says. Now a second-year associate at Heller Ehrman in Menlo Park, Cullen practices tax and compensation law, having discovered that she was “head over heels” for the area of tax law upon taking a personal income taxation course at SCU. She maximizes her non-work time by living in downtown Palo Alto, just a mile from her office, so she can make time for her other passions: swimming each morning at the local pool before riding her bike to work. In college she ran track and cross-country. Now she volunteers as a running coach for the Stanford Ronald McDonald House team. This busy schedule has not kept her from finding a favorite new sport—water polo.
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