Hillbilly Elegy

She instinctively understood the
questions I didn’t even know to ask, and
she always encouraged me to seek
opportunities that I didn’t know existed.
“Go to office hours,” she’d tell me.
“Professors here like to engage with
students. It’s part of the experience
here.” In a place that always seemed a
little foreign, Usha’s presence made me
feel at home.
I went to Yale to earn a law degree.
But that first year at Yale taught me most
of all that I didn’t know how the world
worked. Every August, recruiters from
prestigious law firms descend on New
Haven, hungry for the next generation of
high-quality legal talent. The students