The guy was obsessed with women's underpants. And every morning on the Dulles Toll Road he blew past the unmanned toll booths – never paid the 50 cents. He said they'd never once given him a ticket, even though flashes went off and sirens blew. Walter sat on the other side of my cubicle wall, and this is no joke: He looked at soiled panties on the Internet all day long. I did not make that up. He had a favorite web site, and that web site showed him pictures of used women's panties, and he visited the web site while at work. He cackled like a crazed animal. And that wasn't even the worst part of the job.

This job was a stepping stone on my way to trading for a living, so it has a place in my life and I don't regret it. I regret just two things in my life but we can talk about that another time.

I worked at a major internet service provider after law school, and after J.M. taught me more about sales in 4 months than I ever learned anywhere else, before or since. Easily the best boss I ever had. He fired me for revealing that women were paid less than men. Why wasn't I practicing law during this time? Because I hated it. I hated the legal world. I've never met a happy attorney. Have you?

Walter used to call Chief Technology Officers at work and just say, "I want to sell you a T-3 line. It makes me a $3,000 commission. Let's talk." One day a woman IT director said, "Now is not a good time," and hung up on him. He called her back immediately and said, "Hey Susan, is now a good time?" He ended up talking to her for 15 minutes. I don't know if he sold her a T-3 but I do know he probably wanted to see her panties.

Three months before law school graduation my aunt sent me a clipping from the Wall Street Journal. It was a study that showed lawyers committed suicide far more frequently than any other professionals. At the time I was clerking for a law firm on the 44th floor above Montgomery Street in San Francisco. I read the article and looked out the window. I realized that sooner or later I'd jump.

So I changed tracks. I applied to graduate school. I moved to Washington, D.C. And when I got there, and bought my books, and registered for my classes, talked to the dean. He told me four times that my acceptance letter would arrive tomorrow. They only accepted 20 people into the PhD program. He was happy to have me. I was the only one with a law degree.

Three days later I received a rejection letter from the school. I'd moved across the country for this. I had no job, I owed rent, and it was August 25, 1998. My 27th birthday. I hadn't published any books, I had been tricked into moving across the country, and I had no job prospects whatsoever. Damn it. Dead end.

At that moment I needed to find something stable to hold me up. Something to stand firmly on. Everywhere I went felt like the ground was moving under my feet. As if at any moment the rest of my life would collapse from under me and I'd be drifting in space. What the hell was I going to do?

So I visited a public library in Arlington famous for having collections of ship manifests from the late 19th century. I looked up names from 1890-1895. Ships that arrived in New York from Italy. Looked for my great-grandmother's name: Emilia Ferrara. And some other names too. I found her.

[Ellis Island]

She had come alone.

There weren't any other names on the manifest along with her. No other Ferrara family members. She was 9 years old at the time. How does a 9 year old get on a ship from Napoli and get to America safely? What did she think along the way? Who paid her fare? Who would she meet when she arrived? Did she understand English?

So maybe my great grandmother had known what it was like to start from scratch. And be afraid. And so I walked out of the library and called an old friend from Bear, Stearns in San Francisco.

"Whatever you do, don't get involved in currency trading," he told me.

You can guess what I did next.

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