What a Big Mistake Can Teach You

Anyone can have a sUp in judgment, and if you're lucks', you don't suffer major consecfuences. These women weren't sofortunate. Each made an error that se)U her life into a tailspin. But guess what: IJieir stories prove that you can pick up the pieces and move on.
BYSTACEYCOLINO
Naked Ambition
In spring 2006, Adrians Dominguez,. a second-year student at Brooklyn
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Law School, was feeling desperate. Not only had a had relationship wrecked her self-confidence, but she also was in danger of being kicked out of school because she was too broke to pay her tuition.
As Dominguez was clicking around on Craigslist, looking for a way to make extra money, her eyes fell on an ad seeking young women for a show called Naked Happy Girls. The pay would cover her living expenses for a month, if not more.
"I wasn't thrilled about being in an erotic video, but I felt trapped financially," explains Dominguez, now 28. Ignoring her gut, she submitted photos wi tli a bio and si lhseqi lentlv got the gig. "It was just nudity, not sex, and I didn't think it would affect my life or career," she says.
The show ended i ip airing on Playboy TV in fanuary 2007, and just as Dominguez hoped, it attracted little attention. But that April, a 45-second clip from the show—depicting
Doi i linguez stripping, being spanked, and holding a gavel to her breasts— landed in the e-mail in-boxes of her classmates and professors as well as some lawyers and legal journalists.
The video triggered an instant firestorm in New York's buttoned-up legal community. Lawblogs linked to it, and a tabloid blasted the story of the aspiring attorney who took off her clothes for Playboy TV on its front page.
! only found out about the clip when my roommate told me New York Daily News reporters had called for a comment," says Dominguez. "I was shocked and embarrassed. For the next week, reporters trailed me on cat npus, and bloggers accused ine of releasing it myself to get attention, which was untrue." To this day she isn't sure who sent it.
Thankfully, the
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video didn't harm her law-school standing, and Dominguez graduated tiiat Mav. But it stopped her hunt for a legal job in its tracks. After graduating, she moved back home to California and completed a vearlongelerkship. But whenever she went for an interview, the hiring attorneys inevitably did a Google search and found out about the clip and the bad press. She was told that it made her unemployable.
"I had impressive internships and clerkships under my belt and I'd worked so hard in school, but the video would lie a deal breaker,'5 she says. Adding to the stress were strained relations with her disapproving family. It was overwhelming: She failed the bar exam twice.
After passing last year on her third try
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yet still being turned down for corporate jobs, Dominguez decided she'd endured enough. "My last clerkship was for an attomev who worked for himself, and since