The morning of her first day as a first-year teacher in a first-year school, Cassie Hurst exited her small studio apartment in Dupont Circle and walked West, against the grain of her former colleagues and her former life.
They were there across the street to remind her, perpendicular to her path, walking North to South: women in fancy suits and flip flops on their way to K street consulting jobs. Cassie felt jubilant as she crossed New Hampshire Avenue and watched them disappear from view. It was one of those jobs that first brought her to DC, right after graduating from college. Her goal was to save the world, and environmental policy seemed like a good place to start. Yet after two years on the job, all she’d learned was how to make nice-looking binders, and how long it would take her to rise up the totem pole. She’d never been so unhappy. So she decided it was time for a change.
