Eduard Dmitrievich

Diary Entry: August 30, 2020

So, I’ve done it. I ceremoniously jettisoned my legal career. And no, I don’t exactly have a five-year plan. People back at my alma-mater have welcomed me back with varying degrees of enthusiasm, as is tradition. It’s been a glorious, if unsettling, period of professional ambiguity.

In the middle of all this, I reached out to Professor Pigou over in Illinois, hoping for a crumb of advice.

What I got back today... it’s a symphony of validation.

I’m sitting here reading this huge, encouraging email promising all manner of help and support. It’s music. He mentions a “very great program” at Illinois and dangles the possibility of me joining. More than anything, I’m struck by the sheer American-ness of his openness.

My running theory has always been that when you’re a person of substance, you develop a gravitational pull. When you’re not, people achieve escape velocity with impressive speed. And I, at this exact moment, am not a person of substance. I’m a freshly-minted ex-lawyer with no prospects, a poor young man with a social circle the size of a neutrino.

I needed a lifeline. And Professor Pigou, bless his heart, just threw me the entire fleet of Eduard Dmitrievich.

He declared I have an “excellent chance” of becoming one of the leading scholars in all of Eastern Europe.

Can you imagine it? The sheer theatricality! But as I read this, it feels less like theater and more like a plan. My triumphant return, flanked by an esteemed American academic. The boost to my fledgling career... this isn’t a “what if.” This will be stratospheric. This is the new trajectory.