Jodi Kantor

Right.

I'm really good at finding people.

This guy barely exists on the Internet.

It's a good thing.

After you were kicked off the paper, after you graduated from Columbia, you, drumroll, went on to Harvard Law School.

Presumably to become a lawyer.

Now, within weeks at Harvard, you realized you wanted to leave.

You described a late-night reckoning while reviewing a book listing of hundreds of potential summer jobs for first-year law students, wherein you didn't want a single one, and you admitted to yourself...

that what you really wanted was to be a journalist despite having zero evidence you could succeed.

But you've also written that as far as your family was concerned, journalism belonged on a long list of careers that seemed too flaky or low-paying to pursue.

So what happened after the late-night reckoning and

How did your family respond to your subsequent decision?

Well, let's remember, I not only did not have evidence I could succeed, I had evidence to the contrary.

I had been kicked off a newspaper.

That was my sole journalism experience.

It was like this admission to myself, you know, like,

I really do want to be a journalist.

I at least want to try.

And people thought I was crazy.

Like, as we now know, I'm a kid from Staten Island who got into Harvard Law School, and I admired what attorneys did writ large.