Our most creative approach was to call in all our favors and use all of our "Harvard alumni" pull. Surprisingly, people didn't care that we, too, had lived in Thayer. But we didn't get discouraged.

We considered contacting relatives, but we wanted to avoid the nasty appearance of nepotism. So instead, we approached people who could be relatives--but who we knew weren't.

We thought Judith Pinsker, a writer for "Another World," would definitely pay attention to a letter from a potential relative. Since she didn't reply, we think she must already have enough relatives. Or maybe she had a bad experience with a real niece who shares my name.

Betsy tried a similar approach with Jerome P. Facher of Hale and Dorr. While she didn't get a job, for once she got a very warm letter that didn't start with "unfortunately." That world didn't come until the second sentence when he said that unfortunately, the firm may have a policy against "engaging another Facher (however remote the relationship)."

THE NICEST FIRMS we heard from ended their letters with a statement like "With your excellent qualifications, we are certain you will have no problem finding a position to suit your interests. "We were never as certain. When you get 10 or 20 of these, you start to get a little cynical.

Are rejections all we got for our efforts? Well, no.

We got mail for months, and that's an important bonus. Betsy got to sit on an office of Career Services panel on "How to Get a Summer Job" in the legal field. To cap it off, we both eventually got jobs ("Would you like that Whopper to go?")

And, as our parents annoyingly like to point out, it was a character-building experience.