So to get this information, you have to tap into your social network—student groups, friends who have clerked, and the few professors who are willing to give brutally honest advice. By this point in my law school experience, I had learned that the only way to take advantage of networking was to ask. So I did. Amy Chua told me that I shouldn’t worry about clerking for a prestigious feeder judge because the credential wouldn’t prove very useful, given my ambitions. But I pushed until she relented and agreed to recommend me to a high-powered federal judge with deep connections to multiple Supreme Court justices.
I submitted all the materials—a résumé, a polished writing sample, and a desperate letter of interest. I didn’t know why I was doing it. Maybe, with my Southern drawl and lack of a family pedigree, I felt like I needed proof that I belonged at Yale Law. Or maybe I was just following the herd. Regardless of the reason, I needed to have this credential.
A few days after I submitted my materials, Amy called me into her office to let me know that I had made the short list. My heart fluttered. I knew that all I needed was an interview and I’d get the job. And I knew that if she pushed my application hard enough, I’d get the interview.
That was when I learned the value of real social capital. I don’t mean to suggest that my professor picked up the phone and told the judge he had to give me an interview. Before she did that, my professor told me that she wanted to talk to me very seriously. She turned downright somber: “I don’t think you’re doing this for the right reasons. I think you’re doing this for the credential, which is fine, but the credential doesn’t actually serve your career goals. If you don’t want to be a high-powered Supreme Court litigator, you shouldn’t care that much about this job.”
She then told me how hard a clerkship with this judge would be. He was demanding to the extreme. His clerks didn’t take a single day off for an entire year. Then she got personal. She knew I had a new girlfriend and that I was crazy about her. “This clerkship is the type of thing that destroys relationships. If you want my advice, I think you should prioritize Usha and figure out a career move that actually suits you.”
It was the best advice anyone has ever given me, and I took it. I told her to withdraw my application. It’s impossible to say whether I would have gotten the job. I was probably being overconfident: My grades and résumé were fine but not fantastic. However, Amy’s advice stopped me from making a life-altering decision. It prevented me from moving a thousand miles away from the person I eventually married. Most important, it allowed me to accept my place at this unfamiliar institution—it was okay to chart my own path and okay to put a girl above some shortsighted ambition. My professor gave me permission to be me.
It’s hard to put a dollar value on that advice. It’s the kind of thing that continues to pay dividends. But make no mistake: The advice had tangible economic value. Social capital isn’t manifest only in someone connecting you to a friend or passing a résumé on to an old boss. It is also, or perhaps primarily, a measure of how much we learn through our friends, colleagues, and mentors. I didn’t know how to prioritize my options, and I didn’t know that there were other, better paths for me. I learned those things through my network—specifically, a very generous professor.
My education in social capital continues. For a time, I contributed to the website of David Frum, the journalist and opinion leader who now writes for The Atlantic. When I was ready to commit to one D.C. law firm, he suggested another firm where two of his friends from the Bush administration had recently taken senior partnerships. One of those friends interviewed me and, when I joined his firm, became an important mentor. I later ran into this man at a Yale conference, where he introduced me to his old buddy from the Bush White House (and my political hero), Indiana governor Mitch Daniels. Without David’s advice, I never would have found myself at that firm, nor would I have spoken (albeit briefly) to the public figure I most admired.
I did decide that I wanted to clerk. But instead of walking into the process blindly, I came to know what I wanted out of the experience—to work for someone I respected, to learn as much as I could, and to be close to Usha. So Usha and I decided to go through the clerkship process together. We landed in northern Kentucky, not far from where I grew up. It was the best possible situation. We liked our judicial bosses so much that we asked them to officiate our wedding.
This is just one version of how the world of successful people actually works. But social capital is all around us. Those who tap into it and use it prosper. Those who don’t are running life’s race with a major handicap. This is a serious problem for kids like me. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things I didn’t know when I got to Yale Law School:
That you needed to wear a suit to a job interview.
That wearing a suit large enough to fit a silverback gorilla was inappropriate.
That a butter knife wasn’t just decorative (after all, anything that requires a butter knife can be done better with a spoon or an index finger).
That pleather and leather were different substances.
That your shoes and belt should match.
That certain cities and states had better job prospects.
That going to a nicer college brought benefits outside of bragging rights.
That finance was an industry that people worked in.
Mamaw always resented the hillbilly stereotype—the idea that our people were a bunch of slobbering morons. But the fact is that I was remarkably ignorant of how to get ahead. Not knowing things that many others do often has serious economic consequences. It cost me a job in college (apparently Marine Corps combat boots and khaki pants aren’t proper interview attire) and could have cost me a lot more in law school if I hadn’t had a few people helping me every step of the way.
Chapter 14
As I started my second year of law school, I felt like I’d made it. Fresh off a summer job at the U.S. Senate, I returned to New Haven with a wealth of new friends and experiences. I had this beautiful girlfriend, and I had a great job at a nice law firm almost in hand. I knew that kids like me weren’t supposed to get this far, and I congratulated myself for having beaten the odds. I was better than where I came from: better than Mom and her addiction and better than the father figures who’d walked out on me. I regretted only that Mamaw and Papaw weren’t around to see it.
But there were signs that things weren’t going so well, particularly in my relationship with Usha. We’d been dating for only a few months when she stumbled upon an analogy that described me perfectly. I was, she said, a turtle. “Whenever something bad happens—even a hint of disagreement—you withdraw completely. It’s like you have a shell that you hide in.”
It was true. I had no idea how to deal with relationship problems, so I chose not to deal with them at all. I could scream at her when she did something I didn’t like, but that seemed mean. Or I could withdraw and get away. Those were the proverbial arrows in my quiver, and I had nothing else. The thought of fighting with her reduced me to a morass of the qualities I thought I hadn’t inherited from my family: stress, sadness, fear, anxiety. It was all there, and it was intense.
So I tried to get away, but Usha wouldn’t let me. I tried to break everything off multiple times, but she told me that was stupid unless I didn’t care about her. So I’d scream and I’d yell. I’d do all of the hateful things that my mother had done. And then I’d feel guilty and desperately afraid. For so much of my life, I’d made Mom out to be a kind of villain. And now I was acting like her. Nothing compares to the fear that you’re becoming the monster in your closet.