She sat on the couch, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. She had been aiming to be a partner at the firm for years now. That was the career ladder at Howard, Parker & Smith: you started as an associate and then a select few were tapped to be a partner. She’d intended to be one of those few, especially after Kevin had said that she couldn’t make it. She’d always been at the top of her class. Eventually she’d planned to go in-house but envisioned that as years in the future. But what do I want?

This was a really good job offer, but she hadn’t even had a chance to be a partner at the firm. She couldn’t give that up. She considered calling her mom to talk it over, but she wanted to think it through first. This was her decision, her life. She was afraid that her mom would see it as akin to her giving up tenure. Being a lawyer for a corporation was risky compared to being a partner. A lawyer in a corporation could get laid off in corporate downsizings.

She looked around her living room, bare of any Christmas decorations except for a small Christmas tree. Despite her mom’s suggestion, she had decided not to go away for the weekend and instead planned to spend today decorating her apartment for Christmas (that had all fallen to the wayside with the Jake break-up and the final sprint to making partner). But now she walked over to the small desk in the corner of her living room to procure some paper.

She sat down to list the pros and cons of the two career paths. As she bit her nail, thinking about pros/cons, her attention was caught by a to-do list tacked up on her bulletin board. It was eight years old—a to-do list created when she had first started working at the law firm: sign up for MoMA Junior Associates; hold dinner parties once a month; volunteer; keep daily diary; get a kitten? None of those items had been crossed out, which was why it was still there. She usually didn’t even notice it. She had created it before she’d broken up with Kevin and before she’d become so obsessed with making partner. She smelled the scent of pine needles and remembered those happy family holidays, the hiking trips with her family, biking with Jake. Maybe she needed to think bigger about this question: about her life and what made her happy. If the work-life balance was as Betty described, choosing this job was a chance to get her life back.