At Ann’s new job, the magazine’s founders and top-level editors were older men who were eager to heap praise and opportunities on her male colleagues. She felt like she had to fight to be heard. Several nights a week, the 20-somethings in the office (plus, occasionally, an older male editor) would head to a dive bar across the street for happy-hour beers and chicken tenders. It felt to Ann like an extension of the office, not a decompression from it. It was her choice to attend, but these nights left her exhausted and, often, lonely. Still, it was easier to blame her workplace, the city itself, anything but her own shitty attitude about this life transition. She wrote to one of her college besties: “I’m uneasy, and wondering if this fast-track journalism thing is right for me (and if it isn’t, what is?). I’m starting to think I need to avoid the east coast altogether.” How was it possible that her career felt like it was moving too fast and too slow at the same time?
But she was grateful to have a job at all, given the apocalyptic predictions for her industry. Ann stuck it out, working her way up to editing long articles for the print magazine—which was a minor miracle given that the country was in the midst of a historic recession. She spent her days holding her nose while editing opinion pieces about how this economic collapse was actually a “once-in-a-lifetime policy opportunity.” Ann found solace in her side hustle, contributing to a feminist blog, where she seethed about the wage gap and wondered whether the Pope might enjoy invasive regulation of his body. She also spent a lot of time clicking through a folder of California photos she kept on her work computer.
The job never stopped feeling like an uneasy fit. But Ann had coworkers she really liked and respected. A few years in, she had learned to draw better boundaries, avoiding the after-work events that often turned into beer-fueled political debates. She moved with her boyfriend into a small one-bedroom apartment, which was pretty cozy despite its dingy wall-to-wall carpeting and the sickening ginkgo smell that wafted in through the windows every fall.
Now that she wasn’t brand-new to the city, Ann had also made a few excellent friends outside her work world who were eager to join her in the crowd at music shows and on thrift-shopping excursions to the Virginia suburbs, which were a gold mine for vintage silks and leather skirts. A few people, like Dayo, had crossed over from professional acquaintances to true friends. And one of Ann’s college besties, Lara, had even moved to town. Lara had a relentlessly curious nature that helped Ann start to readjust her own perspective on DC. Lara never wanted to talk about work, loved to dance, and was a reliable museum-going buddy. And, best of all, she lived close enough that one day when Ann locked herself out of her apartment with no shoes on, she walked to Lara’s place in her socks.
So as Ann messaged Dayo about planning a Gossip Girl viewing night, things were better than when she had first landed in town three years earlier. But she still missed her friends back in San Francisco, and she had a feeling of impending abandonment: Lara was on the verge of quitting her job and leaving town. Sure, DC was where Ann lived, but it didn’t feel like home. In a way, it never would. Her fond memories are not of walking its wide diagonal avenues or gazing out the window of her office or even sweaty dance nights at the Black Cat. Her attachment to the city is defined by the people she met there. One person in particular.
* * *
Two years before she met Ann, Aminatou arrived in DC as an international student freshly graduated from the University of Texas, with big dreams and enough money to cover a month of rent and a few cheap beers. On the day of her commencement ceremony, a friend had remarked, “Something weird is happening with the economy. People usually have jobs lined up before graduation.” But Aminatou wasn’t too worried that she didn’t have a single job prospect. The plan all along had been to move to DC with or without one. Aminatou had always thought she would follow in her father’s footsteps and work in international policy. She had studied political science and Middle Eastern studies in college, and she liked that DC felt like an international city. She had always felt drawn to its architecture because it was the one American city that looked like it was built by 19th-century Europeans. Aminatou had fallen in love with the idea of living there during a solo high-school trip and made herself a promise to come back as an adult.
She quickly found a place in a group house in Dupont Circle, a picturesque neighborhood in Northwest DC filled with beautiful embassies. She moved into a tiny room in the charming yellow row house. She was adamant about sleeping on a queen-size bed, which took up the entire room, leaving just enough space to prop up a full-length mirror. Priorities! She used every inch of wall space, including above the bed, for bookshelves. Her roommates were already very good friends with each other, and Aminatou was definitely the Third Roommate. They often went out to bars and the occasional dinner, but Aminatou didn’t feel close to them. She knew only a few people in DC: some girls from college and a boy who had been ahead of her in boarding school who now worked for a cartoonishly evil congressman. Aminatou couldn’t quite understand why something that had never been difficult for her before—fitting in—seemed impossible now. But she would worry about her social life later. First, she was preoccupied with finding a job.
Her college friend had been right: the economy was definitely weird. Aminatou fired off hundreds, truly hundreds, of job queries. She was offered an internship in Senator John Kerry’s office, but she had to turn it down when she found out it was unpaid. “How is everyone else supporting themselves while interning full-time?” she asked herself over and over again.
Her job search was more urgent than most. Aminatou had moved to the United States on a student visa at the start of her college years, and now that she had graduated she would soon need an employer to sponsor her to stay in the country. International students are eligible for a 12-month work authorization called Optional Practical Training that starts as soon as their paperwork is approved. To stay in the country beyond that, Aminatou would need an H-1B work visa. This meant racing the immigration clock to find an employer that could be convinced to hire her and then petition the government to keep her around. A tall order, especially when most Americans don’t understand their own immigration laws.
If Aminatou was lucky enough to get an interview, the visa issue became a barrier. It slowly dawned on her that her hustle wasn’t the problem. She had moved to a city built on money and connections, and she had neither.
She wasn’t defeated, though. She got a seasonal job at a bougie toy store—which wouldn’t solve the visa issue but would at least pay her rent. This was at the height of a Chinese lead-paint toy recall, and American parents were wary of anything with a “Made in China” sticker. The owner of the toy store imported all the minimalist wooden French toys Aminatou had grown up with and added some extra zeros to the price tag. A wonderful scam.
Days at the toy store were boring. She couldn’t (and still cannot) wrap gifts to save her life, and the customers could be so condescending. The job paid the bills, but Aminatou often walked the 1.8 miles to work when she couldn’t afford to take the bus. She was worried, but she kept applying for other positions, optimistic that she might just get lucky.
Almost halfway through her 12-month work authorization, she got hired for a decidedly nonglitzy admin position at a think tank. The salary was listed at $28,000 per year and she was proud of herself when she negotiated them up to $32,000—just enough to pay rent and bills and buy a bottle of tequila at the end of the week. She walked to work, past manicured parks and beautiful embassies. She felt rich! Aminatou figured she would work her way from the front desk into a policy position—which they had assured her was a possibility—and launch her career from there. (You will be unsurprised to learn that this global domination plan hatched by a wide-eyed millennial did not pan out.)