Barack had accepted a summer-associate job with a downtown firm whose
offices were close to Sidley’s, but his time in Chicago was short. He’d been
elected president of the Harvard Law Review for the coming academic year, which
meant he’d be responsible for turning out eight issues of about three hundred
pages each and would need to get back to Cambridge early in order to get
started. The competition to lead the Review was ferocious every year, involving
rigorous vetting and a vote by eighty student editors. Being picked for the
position was an enormous achievement for anyone. It turned out that Barack was
also the first African American in the publication’s 103-year history to be selected
—a milestone so huge that it had been written up in the New York Times,
accompanied by a photo of Barack, smiling in a scarf and winter coat.
My boyfriend, in other words, was a big deal. He could have landed any
number of fat-salaried law firm jobs at that point, but instead he was thinking
about practicing civil rights law once he got his degree, even if it would then take
twice as long to pay off his student loans. Practically everyone he knew was
urging him to follow the lead of many previous Review editors and apply for what
would be a shoo-in clerkship with the Supreme Court. But Barack wasn’t
interested. He wanted to live in Chicago. He had ideas for writing a book about
race in America and planned, he said, to find work that aligned with his values,
which most likely meant he wouldn’t end up in corporate law. He steered
himself with a certainty I found astounding.
All this inborn confidence was admirable, of course, but honestly, try living
with it. For me, coexisting with Barack’s strong sense of purpose—sleeping in the
same bed with it, sitting at the breakfast table with it—was something to which I
had to adjust, not because he flaunted it, exactly, but because it was so alive. In
the presence of his certainty, his notion that he could make some sort of
difference in the world, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit lost by comparison. His
sense of purpose seemed like an unwitting challenge to my own.
Hence the journal. On the very first page, in careful handwriting, I spelled
out my reasons for starting it:
One, I feel very confused about where I want my life to go. What kind of
person do I want to be? How do I want to contribute to the world?
Two, I am getting very serious in my relationship with Barack and I feel
that I need to get a better handle on myself.