Chapter 4. Sweet Home Chicago: Was My Job Killing Me?

"health is the first requisite after morality."
Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 10 Aug. 1787 

Diary of My Disastrous Law Career: From Harvard to Heaven Help Me
Chapter 4

View toward Lake Michigan from my first apartment after returning to my hometown of Chicago, which I rarely saw because my job at a top law firm kept me working up to 20 hours a day.

I had a pretty view at home though, right?

I could see the John Hancock building from another window of my apartment...

...and the Sears Tower from another window at home. I had a cute 1-bedroom apartment, and couldn't spend much time enjoying it or sweet home Chicago because I was so often at work, and so often miserable because of work.

After graduating from beloved Harvard College and interesting Harvard Law School, why did I ultimately leave the practice of law? One way to look at it: I left to save my life. After reading this blog of memoirs from my disastrous law career, you may wonder why I stayed for as long as I did.

In future posts, I'll share more about Harvard with you, too. My four years at Harvard College (1986 - 1990; I graduated at age 20) were a beautiful and exciting intellectual paradise full of every opportunity to explore world and self. My three years at Harvard Law School (I graduated in 1996, at age 26, after gap years including in Europe) -- during what a staff member later told me they called "the nasty '90s" -- were less positive.

I was at the Law School prior to the time that it was led by Dean Elena Kagan (now Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan) who became Dean in 2003, and before her successor Dean Martha Minnow. The two of them brought in enormously impressive innovations, new opportunities for students to go beyond traditional law practice, and much-needed inclusiveness of women, people of color, and other communities. Before that, under the leadership in "the nasty 90s," I had some phenomenal professors and met some phenomenal people, to be sure, and I learned a tremendous amount. Yet, I also suffered a tremendous amount, not so much from the coursework -- I've always loved learning -- but from the atmosphere of bullying and patriarchy in the form of loudly antagonistic student groups, some very old-fashioned professors, and an administration who seemed to punish victims and ignore student needs. When I was there, the Law School seemed not a vibrant and exciting community like the College, but a stifling and negative anti-community darkened by misogyny, racism, and, during my first year, the murder of the wife of one of my professors, who was a law professor at another school, and the aftermath on campus of that horrific event which believe it or not is still unsolved today. I was frequently sick my first year. Doctors couldn't find any reason, and I believe my illness was due to the fractious atmosphere on campus. Stress kills. I found ways to manage the environment somewhat during my second and third years in law school, after two gap years during which the environment also changed. But was the environment that I found murderously toxic, a sort of practice for law practice?

More on school later. For now:

Don't fence me in: this view into my office from my desk at the law firm, and the fact that I even took this photo at the time, gives you a sense of how hemmed in I felt by many factors at work. 

Lawyer Job 3: Chicago

While still in Hamburg, I started working with a headhunter in my hometown of Chicago who specialized in placing attorneys at top law firms. I got a job at one of the most prestigious large law firms in Chicago, which hired quite a few Harvard Law School graduates like me. At last, I thought, my lawyer dreams were coming true, and I would be working with smart people on meaningful projects in an energizing environment in which I was included and treated fairly, and where I could also inspire others. For ways in which this dream had not come true at past law jobs, please see past posts!

When I think of my former and disastrous career as a lawyer, this is the job I think of first. Maybe this is because I was there the longest during my short law career. Maybe it's because my experiences there were powerful and became the benchmark by which I evaluated prior and subsequent experiences as a lawyer. In any case, instead of finding myself in a job I loved, I found misery in my job. My suffering increased to new levels which made my prior levels of suffering seem almost like a warm-up.

Let's begin with examples of physical suffering.

Wisdom teeth episode

I was working long and intense hours at the firm, much longer and more intense than in Germany. I worked at least 12 hours a day at my new Chicago job, slept at most 5 hours a night, and seemed to be stressed 24 hours a day. I was 28 years old, I noticed that my two remaining wisdom teeth were coming in, and I was in pain. I had had the two on one side of my mouth extracted while in law school. I asked my dentist shouldn't we go ahead and extract the other two while we were at it? He said no, I wouldn't need to have those two extracted. He was wrong. By this time, I was lacerating the inside of my mouth every time I chewed. I told the partner who was leading a large corporate finance deal on which I was one of many attorneys working, that I would need to take a day and have my wisdom teeth pulled due to pain and inability to chew. He said no. I said, what do you mean no, the teeth have decided they are on the move. He said, wait until the deal is over. I remember thinking: would he give the same advice to his daughter?

I tried to wait and keep working, but I couldn't. I couldn't eat, and was in terrible pain. I scheduled the extraction for an afternoon, figuring I would have a local anesthetic like last time, and be back at work the next day. However, things didn't go as smoothly with this dentist. I ended up having a general anesthetic, and luckily my mother was there to take me home afterward. I was not feeling up to going anywhere the next day. I tried to get up in the morning and go to work anyway, but with the pain and the painkillers, I couldn't figure out how to get dressed. I called my mother, and said I had to go to work but couldn't get dressed. She exclaimed: What?! I told her it was very important that I go to work and could she help me. She came over, and helped me get dressed. Then I couldn't figure out how to get to work, so she got into a taxi with me, went up the elevator with me, walked into my office with me, put me into my chair, and sat down on the other side of my desk. I tried to turn on my computer and couldn't. I burst into tears. My mother said this is ridiculous, and took me home. The deal survived an extra day without me; in fact nothing at all happened on the deal that day. Why had I allowed myself to be pressured into disregarding my health?

Miscarriage episode

That's correct: miscarriage, meaning the spontaneous early end of a pregnancy. If you're feeling squeamish reading about a miscarriage, but made it through the above wisdom teeth episode, I invite you to ask yourself: how are they so different? Both are a natural part of life, occurring through no fault of the people involved. All mammal species that have pregnancy, also have miscarriages. One out of four human pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and one out of four women has at least one miscarriage. These numbers might in fact be higher, because most miscarriages take place very early in a pregnancy -- as mine was -- and sometimes the miscarriage happens when a woman doesn't know she is pregnant, and completes itself without the need for medical intervention. Why do miscarriages occur? Science says they are random, due to a chromosomal problem with the egg, the sperm, or both, making it impossible for an embryo to form. With no embryo to develop into a baby, the pregnancy ends. At a metaphysical level, you could say that no soul is coming to Earth at that time, so there is no need for the pregnancy. There is no stigma to having your wisdom teeth pulled, nor is there any reason to stigmatize a woman (or a couple, or a family) who experiences a miscarriage. Click here to learn more. As for my experience:

I was on a huge corporate m&a (mergers and acquisitions, or buying and selling companies) deal at the firm, worth $1 billion to the client who was selling parts of its business operations around the world. I was part of a large team of lawyers, and I was working 20-hour days. That is not a typo: 20-hour days; 20 hours a day. The partners would send us associates home to sleep for a few hours, in shifts. For example: you, go home and be back here at 3 am; you, go home when she gets back and then be back here at 5 am. You really had to live in the city, near the firm, to take taxis back and forth. What if you had kids; how would you manage a family with such a schedule?

I was on another large deal at the firm at the same time, a corporate finance transaction, and I felt doubly overwhelmed. At one point, I felt even sicker than you would expect to feel with that kind of schedule. I went to the ladies room and looked in the mirror, and I looked green. I had awful abdominal pain. By the way, it was not unusual to find someone crying in the ladies room. It might be a sad sick associate like me, or an overworked secretary who had been harangued by an attorney. Someone stopped crying and came out of a stall; it was a secretary. I asked her if I looked green, and she said yes, you kind of do. I told her I was going to the doctor. My doctor told me I was having a miscarriage, that if it wasn't the end of the day she would have me go to the hospital immediately, but that I probably wouldn't die overnight (she said that with a straight face) and that I was to meet her at the hospital first thing in the morning for emergency surgery to remove the matter which wasn't releasing on its own and which was not an embryo and would never form into one. I staggered back to the firm, told one of the partners that I had to have emergency surgery the next morning, a Friday, and wouldn't be in. I didn't tell him what the surgery was for; maybe I should have. His reply, without looking up: Hrrmph. I had the outpatient procedure the next day, asleep under a general anesthetic. What I remember is a very painful pre-operation injection in my wrist to numb the feeling before the nurse put a large IV into my wrist. After the entire procedure was over, I went home, and I took the weekend off to recover from the general anesthetic.

When I came into the office that Monday, I had 14 voicemails from the corporate finance partner, asking, and then angrily screaming, Where are you, we need you! I went directly to his office, and asked him what had happened on the deal over the weekend. He said nothing had happened, but that I had to be available because we were "beholden" to our clients. I asked myself: Wasn't I also beholden not to die on the job? I said to the partner that I was sorry for being unavailable, but that as I had told him, I had to have emergency surgery. He replied: You didn't say you wouldn't be checking your voicemails. I felt all the wind go out of me. There was no pity, mercy, empathy, compassion, or anything of that nature at this firm, I said to myself. Out loud, I said that I felt so scared about the surgery, and then so exhausted afterward, that it didn't occur to me to change my outgoing voicemail message to say that I wouldn't be checking messages. He said: Next time it will. I left his office, and thought to myself that there will be no next time, because I am getting out of this law firm before it kills me. And I did. (Spoiler alert: my next law jobs would pose dangers too.)

One of the themes of my disastrous law career is that being vulnerable was seen as a liability, something that could be used against you, not as the mark of humanity or positive workplace attribute that we say it is today. It seemed to me that lawyers at the firms where I worked were supposed somehow to be robots, with no lives and no feelings. I always felt I was being pushed into a cookie cutter mold that didn't fit me. These were not the people-centered environments that I expected or in which I am more likely to thrive. I often said to myself: If I'm the boss somewhere someday, I won't treat people like this, but will create the kind of positive work culture where people are excited to come to work and grow, contribute, and be part of something fantastic!

I talked with some of my colleagues at the firm about this episode. Our dark-humor joke became that we needed to change our outgoing voicemail messages any time we would be away from our desks at all. For instance: Hello, this is [name of associate] and I will not be checking messages between 4:14 pm and 4:18 pm today because I will be in the elevator between the 40th and 45th floors and then returning, or, because I will be in the ladies room, or, because I will be hiding under my desk and crying about my misguided life choices.

Another important note: the m&a deal that I mentioned working on at this time would result in 15,000 people losing their jobs, as our client sold its divisions. I was not the only one in pain. I wanted to do work that helped people, not hurt them. How had I thought corporate law would be the right place for me? True, I had wanted to practice a different type of law, and got sidetracked into transactional law when I got sidetracked to Germany. When was I going to find a new track? This firm, this sparkling firm of prestige, smart people, hard workers, and huge clients, proved to be not a track but an obstacle course.

My law career was not my ikigai - or reason for motivation and joy. I was sick all the time, screamed at, paid less than the men, and did not find meaning in making rich banks richer or helping companies buy and sell each other and remove thousands of people from their jobs. Did the world really need one more corporate associate at a large law firm? Could I find a way to align my work with my values?

Here are some more examples of challenging health-related issues at the firm, and I will tell you more about the overall challenging culture of the firm in another post. (Spoiler alert: Misogyny! Lower pay for women! Diversity and inclusion disasters before there was diversity and inclusion!)


Constant low fever

I had a constant low fever. Was this an immune reaction? Was it caused by stress? A virus? Lack of sleep? Whatever the cause, I had a low fever, earache, and feverish buzzing in my head every day. Daily. Every day. Doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me, yet I was literally burning out. Home remedies like tea and vitamins didn't help. I had never experienced this problem before I started this job. The problem was uncomfortable and draining, and I didn't know what to do. My ikigai, or motivation for life and work, was not supposed to make me sick. (Another spoiler alert: this problem stopped when I eventually quit this job. Then I developed new illnesses at subsequent lawyer jobs. Allergic to law? As always, you may draw your own conclusions!)

Weight loss

If you're depressed, do you eat, or lose your appetite? For me, it's the latter. I sank to 92 pounds, and at 5'2" a healthy weight is considered 104 to 135 pounds. Every body is different, and I've always had a small frame, but I knew I was underweight, and my doctor said that I was in the "danger zone" and that I should gain weight. My mother said when she hugged me, all she could feel were bones. Not only depression but overwork were factors: some days I would work straight through lunch, after having no breakfast. Then I would work until 9:30 or 10 pm, and be too tired to eat after 12+ hours of work. I wasn't trying to lose weight, and sometimes some of us try and can't. But, the point is that I was not enjoying optimal health.

Depressed: age 28. It is fun though to remember how naturally red my hair was as a younger woman, before it darkened naturally!

Mental health

If you have read previous posts, you know that I was married at this time, to a young German lawyer who had started behaving in ways that were consistent with schizophrenia, such as hearing voices and doing what they said (why did the voices never say to do nice, healthy, helpful things?), and experiencing paranoia and mood swings. He refused help. After many intense situations, and after realizing my own health and safety were at risk, I finally decided to separate from this man who had been an incredibly kind, thoughtful, and fun person before his illness, and who seemed to have been replaced by someone whose behavior made him unrecognizable. I came back to my hometown of Chicago while he remained in Hamburg, yet I clung to the hope that he would join me and get help. Those outcomes did not occur. During that time, we traveled back and forth to each other. These trips were stressful, because every time I saw him, he was worse. After a year of being separated, and years of difficult situations before that due to my husband's illness, I was ready to file for divorce. I accepted that I couldn't help someone who didn't want it. After the divorce, I was in touch with my ex-husband for just a little while, as I struggled to avoid falling back into unhealthy patterns, and I finally ended our communication. I haven't heard from him or seen him since then, and I truly hope he found peace.

During the separation, I felt depressed. I did not consider suicide; rather I didn't want to get out of bed, and felt gloomy and sad most of the time, and anxious or angry at other times. If you knew me before this, or after this, you might think of me as a positive, optimistic, compassionate person. That is indeed my nature, and these are characteristics I work to maintain and grow. In fact, someone once asked my mother about me, referring to my positivity: "is she always like this?" My very rational-minded mother sighed somewhat and replied: Yes. :)

You might ask how much of this depression was related to my disaster of a career, and how much to the tragedies of my husband's illness? I definitely felt depressed about both my job and my personal life, and felt that I had situational depression.

My wise mother, who has a master's degree in psychology, sent me to see a psychiatrist. I was glad to talk about what I was experiencing, and wanted to find ways to feel better. I hadn't expected those ways to include antidepressant drugs, and indeed the drugs did not suit me. The psychiatrist prescribed an anti-depressant right away, and I tried it for a little while, but it made me feel worse. I hated the way it seemed to change my personality toward meanness! I found it hard not to make negative remarks or be hard and cold toward people. When I couldn't stop myself from being sarcastic to a client, I stopped taking the drug. The psychiatrist encouraged me to stay on it longer than just a few weeks, and see if things balanced out, but I refused. Maybe I was having a paradox reaction to this drug, or some sort of overkill reaction. I remembered that once in high school I was given an antihistamine for an allergy, and I passed out. I don't drink because even a sip makes me feel sleepy and unwell, and I don't drink caffeine because even decaf coffee is overstimulating and makes me feel terribly uncomfortable. I stick to chocolate, and have done so my whole life! I wanted to get back to being positive, and the antidepressant was not the way for me to achieve that.

Then my psychiatrist prescribed an anti-anxiety drug. This actually helped somewhat for the short term, though one dose was much too powerful and would knock me out. So, for a couple of weeks, I would break a tablet up into tiny chips and take one when I got so overwhelmed with sadness and a simultaneous feeling of claustrophobia that I would burst into panic and tears.

This non-customized drug-focused approach to mental health was adding to my worries instead of alleviating them, however, and I stopped seeing the psychiatrist and was glad to be done with my short dalliance with pharmaceuticals. Was I like my soon-to-be ex-husband, rejecting help? I tried the methods that were offered, however. When they didn't work the way I needed them to, I dropped them before they could do harm. I just needed to mourn, to feel my feelings, not to skip over an important time of human experience and reflection.

Have you ever heard of a spontaneous cure to depression? Evidently, one in ten adults is depressed in any given year. Some of us find that we become spontaneously relieved of depression, and this happened to me. I woke up one morning, and noticed I was simply sick of being depressed. I started planning a home decoration project -- this was the first time in a long time I felt like doing something I'd always loved. Over the next few days, my depression lifted. I certainly don't pretend that spontaneous evaporation of the illness or condition is the solution for everyone; I am simply telling you my story.

Spiritual health

As I emerged from depression, and later from separation and divorce, I had energy and motivation to feel better. Non-drug therapies or healing methods were more suited to me, and I began to seek these out myself. It occurred to me that overwork was keeping me from my spiritual path, and I resolved to change this. I wouldn't find meditation until later, but at this time, I found other ways to be good to my soul, to myself.

For example, I started working out with a trainer, started drinking protein shakes that she recommended, took up tennis again, and put on some healthy weight that I needed. I took the time to do these activities during lunch breaks, instead of staying at my desk and working. Getting some sunshine during the day, and walking across the Chicago River to the gym were peaceful, spiritual moments.

Chocolate has been a balm and a fascination for me my entire life, and this phase was no different in that regard! I kept a silver dish filled with chocolate on my desk at all times. Sometimes I would even sneak out of the office to buy a bonbon and get some fresh air with my fresh chocolate.

I also took some healthy trips. Travel has been a joy since childhood, as I loved our family vacations to parts of the Great Lakes region and Canada. I also loved traveling throughout Europe as a student, during a gap year, and with my husband. Trips during the Chicago lawyer phase of my life included a trip alone to New York City to see a Bonnard exhibition I really wanted to see at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had a marvelous and relaxing time. I've always loved flying, finding it the perfect window of time for reflection and relaxation; even just being on an airplane can be a mini-vacation for me, although this certainly can depend on the airline!

In the year 2000, I went to my 10th-year college reunion, at home sweet Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts! It felt wonderful to reconnect there with the kind of smart, nice people I thought I'd be working with as a lawyer.

Quincy House at Harvard, where I lived as a college sophomore, junior, and senior, before graduating in 1990 at age 20.  

With a former roommate at our 10th-year college reunion. 

I felt so overwhelmed with work as a lawyer, that I didn't fill out an entry for the 10th-year reunion report, so only my name and address were listed.

Jobs, careers, and life have changed, but Harvard remains: I missed the 5th-year reunion due to my then-husband's illness, and haven't missed another one since. I am referring to my Harvard College reunions; I haven't attended any Harvard Law School reunions, except for a special one held in 2016 for all classes, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of women graduates. At "Celebration 60," I spoke on a panel about Being Your Own Boss: Women as Entrepreneurs Outside the Practice of Law, as I had already long since left the law. 

Inspiration and imagination: I brought back the Bonnard exhibition catalogue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Of course, my trips were not unplugged vacations but working vacations, yet the changes of scenery were positive for my mental and spiritual health. As my health and emotional life improved, I started to think about ways to leave the firm.

One more example of increasing my spiritual health for now: I started a gratitude journal. I wrote down 3 things every night that I was grateful for. Even though I was no longer deeply depressed, and was taking steps toward physical, mental, and spiritual health, make no mistake: I was still in a job that made me miserable. I didn't like the work itself, or the environment, or most of the people with whom I worked, or the lack of meaning I felt in what I was doing. Instead of finding my ikigai, I seemed to be in danger of falling prey to another Japanese concept: death by overwork, called Karoshi. For instance, I regularly worked weekends; if you didn't, you were seen as not working enough. So, some days, all I could think of to be grateful for and to write in my gratitude journal was that I had arms, legs, and a bed. That's ok; we start where we are.

Terrible lesson: My employers did not care about my health and wellbeing, and seemed willing to have me sacrifice these for the firm's revenue. Outsourcing my health to doctors or for the pharmaceutical industry's revenue did not work for me either, did it.

Positive lesson: I could take charge of my health and wellbeing.

How bad would my life and health get at the firm get before I made a change? Would you already have found another career if you were in my shoes? I haven't even told you some other unforgettable situations at the firm yet, such as how we all found out that the partners were paying women lawyers less than men for doing the same jobs, and how I found out the method by which partners ensured that most women attorneys would not become partners. We'll also talk about the screamers, the strippers, and why associates couldn't go to the holiday party. Stay tuned...!

Valerie Beck