...but am I a good PD?

I'm A PD wrote a post that leveled me. Her post made me realize exactly what it was about my job that made me feel so anxious. I've been feeling so insecure and always struggling with the belief that maybe deep down I'm not good at this job, or good for my clients, and I think I'm a PD hit the nail on the head here. There's no way to tell. There is no objective measure, or list of characteristics that make someone a good public defender. Which means that people like me, who have always received good grades and tested well and been on honor roll, etc. are left to flounder in our grey area of evaluating our performance.

I think her words say it best for me:

there's no objective way of measuring whether you are 'good' at doing your work. You expect to lose cases; you expect your clients to hate you and do an unreasonable amount of time; you expect judges to yell at you; you expect polite society to suspect that you are a naive enabler of evil in the world. What you don't expect is the sinking and persistent feeling that you are actually bad at what you do.