In law school, Kuo often found herself “timid and afraid to speak” during classes (73). Her grades were decent, but she frequently doubted herself, as she wasn’t as quick as her classmates.

During her first semester, she read Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the story of a former lawyer who ascends to being a judge. He convinces himself that he is leading a noble, decent life. Then, he becomes painfully ill. He hallucinates and hears a voice inside of him, which demands to know how he wants to live. When Ivan listens to the voice and replies to it, the pain disappears. Ivan wonders if he has lived properly, though he’s done everything that would constitute a good life.

In her second year of law school, Kuo spent a lot of time at expensively catered events, being wooed by recruiters from firms. Between her second and third years, she had a very well-paid internship at a law firm in Manhattan. She was assigned a lawyer-mentor—a Korean American who seemed very old to her. He had likely gone to law school straight out of college, then began working at the firm. During the four weeks of her internship, Kuo engaged in dull work, which was interrupted only by food and drink.