Investigative journalist Jodi Kantor was asked to deliver Columbia University's commencement address last year as the campus reeled from pro-Palestinian protests and federal funding threats. She expected to discuss the chaos. Instead, the students who spoke with her beforehand had a different urgent question: how do you find meaningful work when the world feels shattered?
That conversation seized Kantor and became the genesis for her new book, "How to Start," a practical guide aimed at young people navigating an overwhelming job market and existential uncertainty. The short, punchy read draws on her reporting experience while offering something more intimate than her previous work on Harvey Weinstein or the Supreme Court.
Kantor, who wrote the book during early mornings before heading to her job at the New York Times, was propelled by personal upheaval. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and successfully treated, her daughter left for college, and she turned 50, all within a compressed timeframe. "Those all happened in a flash," she says. "Like, tick-tock, do it now, don't wait." She felt compelled to offer something beyond her usual investigative reporting.
The Columbia students belong to what Kantor describes as a "battered" generation facing a fundamentally different early career landscape than she did. She observed this anxiety firsthand through her own daughters and their peers. "The dining table where I'm sitting," she notes during our conversation from her Brooklyn home, "is a counselling spot for my daughter's friends."
Over years of campus speaking tours following the Weinstein investigation, Kantor noticed a troubling shift in student attitudes. "What I saw year after year was that the fear and the cynicism were rising," she recalls. The cultural representation of work changed too. "We went from Parks and Recreation and The Office, which showed dysfunctional but human work environments, to Severance, which offers a very dark take on work."
The landscape is objectively harder. Entry-level positions face automation threats, housing costs prohibit stability, student debt burdens young workers, and constant negative news cycles reinforce a sense of futility. Yet Kantor resists doom. "The question is: what agency do we have for the future?" she asks. "You're not a statistic. It's important to educate yourself on what's going on, but those news reports aren't sentences. You're still the author of your own life."
Her advice centers on two core challenges: figuring out what you want to do, then figuring out how to do it. For the first part, she recommends observation and journaling, not to indulge yourself but to notice patterns. Which tasks engage you? Which people do you gravitate toward? "Everyone's feeling a lot of anxiety and negativity," she explains. "The problem is those are not terribly good guides. You don't want your life's compass to be dread." Positive emotions, she argues, tend to point you in the right direction more reliably than fear.
Financial security matters, Kantor acknowledges, especially for those burdened by debt and cost-of-living pressures. But there's a critical distinction between earning enough to live decently and structuring your entire existence around maximum income. "One of the primary goals of working is to protect yourself financially," she says. "But that goal is very different from deciding that the way you're going to structure all of your hours is in pursuit of the largest possible house."
Risk-taking, counterintuitively, becomes necessary for progress. "You don't really get anywhere in life without taking on some risk," Kantor argues. In her book, one of the happiest people who pursued their calling is a modestly earning historian. The pursuit of craft and the identification of genuine need in the world offer better markers of success than raw salary figures.
Human connection bypasses the faceless, depressing world of algorithmic job applications. Making real relationships within fields you care about creates pathways that online portals cannot. "I believe that craft and need, even in a bad environment, will maximize chances of happiness and success," she says.
Kantor's worldview was shaped by her grandparents, both Holocaust survivors. She grew up with an "almost crushing sense of responsibility" but also profound meaning. Her grandmother, who lived to 99, modeled recovery and resilience by speaking openly about her experiences and ultimately becoming, as Kantor recalls, "the happiest person I knew." Her grandfather, unable to voice his trauma, carried a heavier burden. This observation stuck: the talkers, the ones who engaged with their experiences, fared better long-term.
Those early lessons drew Kantor toward investigative journalism, where responsibility translates into illuminating hidden systems and uncomfortable truths. She studied history at Columbia, briefly attended Harvard Law School, then left to pursue journalism because she "just couldn't ignore" the desire. That choice to abandon a prestigious path for an uncertain one informed her entire career philosophy.
Today, reporting on the Supreme Court and its unaccountable power over 20 or 30 years feels urgent and meaningful. "There's so much purpose," she says of working in this moment. She wants others to find comparable fulfillment, though she harbors no illusions about ease. "If you give up your search for satisfaction at the outset of your journey, the likelihood that you're ever going to get there is very small. You have put happiness further out of reach."
Author James Rodriguez: "Kantor's book arrives when young people need permission to ignore the noise and trust their own compass, especially if that compass points somewhere other than maximum earnings."
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