THE PAPER CHASE One of the traditions at Harvard Law School is that parents buy space in the back of the yearbook to leave a message for their graduating children. In the 1988 edition, next to serious, almost formal messages of congratulations to Michelle's classmates, is a message from Michelle's parents to her: "We knew you would do this fifteen years ago when we could never make you shut up." Just twenty-four years old, Michelle now had two of the most respected academic degrees in the country. Doors would open for her. She'd be offered jobs starting at larger salaries than those her parents earned. If she did nothing more than avoid big mistakes, her career would continue to advance, thanks to the prestige of the Princeton and Harvard names. But as she had already found out, there was a price to pay for this kind of success. Not long after starting Harvard, she had called her former boss at the Third World Center, Czerny Brasuell, and admitted, "If I could do this over, I'm not sure I would." She realized that she probably should have worked for a year after Princeton before deciding whether to go to law school.
