On a chart on the bulletin board in the front of the classroom, my third-grade teacher affixes another gold star next to my name. I have amassed more gold stars than anyone else in the class, one for every perfect score on a multiplication quiz.

For a moment, I take pride in this achievement. But then the moment passes, we move on to geography, and the feeling dissipates. In its wake, I feel an emptiness, originating somewhere between my stomach and chest, where it will remain.

This is the pinnacle of my success.

* * *

There isn’t an easy way to write about what it means to chase success and feel unsatisfied with the little of it you did achieve without sounding like a total asshole. Especially when you’re someone who somehow wound up with not one but two Ivy League degrees.

Maybe I am an asshole. Maybe you’ll have to be okay with it. Maybe I’ll have to be okay with it too.

* * *

In my room, alone, I refresh my inbox. An email appears.

This is what I see:

Congratulations on your acceptance to: Not Yale. Not Harvard. Not Stanford. Not Penn. Not Princeton. Not MIT. Not Oxford. Not Cambridge. Not Swarthmore. Not Amherst. Not Duke. Not Pomona. Not Williams.

* * *

It’s three in the morning. I cross over Cascadilla Gorge on my walk home from the library. The streetlights are fuzzed orange through the haze.

Six students have died this year.

I do not linger on the College Avenue bridge. But I wonder.

* * *

Back in New Jersey, my grandmother is dead, the fourth family member in as many years. Across an ocean, I hang up the phone and turn back to the books spread out on my bed. I do not go home.

* * *

In Ithaca, I set my Target wristwatch down next to my test booklet and No. 2 pencils. Later, I return to my room, drink some NyQuil, wake up the next morning, fold some laundry. I am alone.

* * *

In Morningside Heights, I wake up on the tiny couch in my tiny apartment, my laptop open in my lap, my Torts casebook fallen to the floor by my feet. An ambulance wails in the distance, then the siren fades, dissipates. I rub the crick in my neck, the sleep from my eyes, pick up my casebook, get back to work.

* * *

It’s EIP, and I’m in the second-floor hallway of the Midtown DoubleTree. I ask a classmate to look at a line on my printed resume and tell me whether the four words I accidentally put in Times look any different from the ones in Times New Roman. I am serious.

No, I can’t tell, she says.

I go home and change the font anyway, print out a new stack of resumes to hand out the next day.

* * *

The Latin root of the word ambition is ambire, which means to “go around” or “traverse.” In ancient Rome, candidates for public office would go around the city to canvas for votes: political success literally required locomotion, or ambulation as it were, on the canvasser’s part.

I’ve never run for political office and have no desire to run—which is not to say that I’ve never thought about it—but I do know what it is to move, to travel, to traverse, to go around for the sake of one’s ambitions.

* * *

The associate on the other side of the desk looks exhausted.

I’m exhausted, she says.

I clear my throat, cross and uncross my legs.

She blinks at me, expectantly.

I do not get the job.

* * *

In my room, alone, I refresh the page.

Pending.

This is how I measure my worth.

* * *

The phone rings in my neighbor’s office, and I wake up with a start, look around, try to get my bearings. I can’t have been sleeping for long—my screen is still lit, the cursor still blinking.

I swivel my chair, stretch my legs out, pull them back. Outside my window, a storm has rolled in, and the sky over Park Avenue gone nearly dark.

I check the time and realize I’ve missed another networking event. My absence will be noted.

I pull on the wrinkled blazer I’d draped over the back of my chair, yawn, turn around, get back to work.

* * *

In the Poconos, the trees are a blaze of color, the early autumn air cool and dry.

The car pulls to a stop in front of me. I bend to pick up my bag and then get into the back.

I am retreating from the retreat.

* * *

In Oklahoma City, I put my shoes in a plastic bin, slide the bin forward onto the belt. They are navy flats that don’t match my black suit. Barefooted, I walk through the metal detector. I do not make eye contact with the TSA agent. I am alone.

I do not get the job.

* * *

In Buffalo, we take the bar exam. Afterward, we drive to Niagara Falls, and I look down at the torrent of water. I wonder.

* * *

I think I have applied for something in, and thus entertained the possibility of living in, almost every single state except perhaps Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Utah, and I honestly can’t remember why those states aren’t also on the list.

Research and experience tell me that this is not an unusual occurrence among those with advanced degrees. Because of course class and income and educational status are inextricably tied up in all of this, in determining the life you can lead and where, what options are and are not available to you.

* * *

In Cleveland, the Cavs are playing. I’ve been here before, but I can’t for the life of me remember when. I’m in a suit that I’m certain I wore the last time, walking to another interview. I know the buildings; I know the route.

I do not get the job.

* * *

On a flight to Dallas, I proofread my resume.

This is also how I measure my worth.

* * *

In San Diego, the law clerk sits across from me, awaiting my answer. He is blond. I see sky through his office window, shaded the same blue-gray as the sea.

I lean back in my chair. I’ve forgotten his question.

He clears his throat, steeples his fingers, blinks at me expectantly.

I do not get the job.

* * *

In Oklahoma City again, and I am twenty minutes early, eating Goldfish from a Ziploc bag as I sit on a bench around the corner from the national memorial.

A US Marshall stands at the end of the block, watching me.

A cold wind blows, and I button my coat over my suit jacket.

I do not get the job.

* * *

Outside of Birmingham, I turn the wrong way down a narrow alley. I have had my license for years but still do not really know how to drive. I am late for another networking dinner.

I reverse, turn the car around, head in the other direction. In the distance, the skyline glitters with light.

* * *

In Detroit, three faces blink at me blankly. Ears burning, I lean back in my chair, cross and uncross my legs.

We’re not joking, one of them says. You have thirty minutes.

I am handed a writing prompt, and then three law clerks file silently out.

When my time is up, I’ve written two paragraphs. The secretary checks on me twice before finally taking the paper away.

Aren’t you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you?

I do not get the job.

* * *

This is my internal monologue:

I am a good lawyer.

I am a terrible lawyer.

I am a decent writer.

I am a terrible writer.

I am a mediocre person.

I am a terrible person.

* * *

In the evening, waiting for the subway home, a rush of hot air as a train careens past. In its wake, garbage litters the track below. I wonder.

* * *

In Italian, a language I do not speak, ambire is the word for wanting ardently, longing for. This, too, seems relevant in considering what it is to be ambitious, to have ambitions, to chase gold stars and jump through hoops and climb the corporate ladder, to have a fire in one’s belly, to be driven by success, to have drive. To drive to the airport, get on a plane, move across states or nations or oceans, settle down in a new land but also to be unsettled there, to be unsettled everywhere.

* * *

In the car after the third course of a progressive dinner, in front of another partner’s house, I am curled up in the backseat. I am so tired. So very tired.

* * *

In the middle of the day, I go home for lunch. The cat I’ve had for two weeks knows that something is wrong and will not come to me. I pick her up and put her in her carrier. I leave the carrier and cat at the adoption center where I got her.

I can’t do it, I say.

I walk back to the office and get back to work.

Later, I return home to an empty apartment. I pick up her toys. Put them all in a box that I tuck under the bed. Heat up a bowl of soup. Get back to work.

* * *

In Chicago, my nephew is born.

Congrats, I say in a text to my sister, and then I get back to work.

* * *

In Houston, on an overnight trip, I unpack eight binders and spread them out on the hotel bed. It is late; outside, the moon a yellow crescent. I close the curtains and open a binder, but all the words are a blur.

* * *

Back in my office, I have dozed off again.

The evening cleaning crew vacuums down the hall.

* * *

In the window across from my office, a man works with his head bent, carving a scroll, I imagine, or cutting a purfling channel.

I turn from the window and return to my empty office, the waiting computer, the lambent glow, the blinking cursor, the blank page.

* * *

How long does it take for a person to put down roots after they have uprooted/unearthed/unlanded themselves? How many lifetimes will it take? Is there in uprooting an inevitable severing and a leaving behind? Is that what drives this longing for, this wanting ardently? Leaving behind?

What was left?