Settle for More

by Megyn Kelly

The sum they offered me seemed ludicrous: $85,000 a year. I would be able to pay my bills, every month! Little old me. A girl from Albany, or, as we called it, “Smallbany.” I wasn’t yet twenty-five. It was more money than either of my parents had ever made in a year. I had no idea what it was like not to dread getting the mail, or to simply pay a bill when it arrived, stress-free—but now, for the first time in my adult life, that would be in my future. And that firm I had interned for in Syracuse that didn’t make me an offer? Well, guess what—they came through. Called me up and offered me the job, and the life I had thought I wanted in Syracuse. But it was too late. I had already found a new dream, and a new me: Megyn Kelly, Esquire. Attorney and counselor at Bickel & Brewer. Big-city high flyer. I moved to the Windy City in August 1995. I had rented an apartment in a high-rise near Oprah’s apartment building on Navy Pier. The night I moved in, I remember looking out the window in an apartment furnished with a bed, a love seat, a TV, and two milk crates, drinking white Franzia boxed wine and playing Tina Turner’s “I Don’t Wanna Fight” on CD. I did it, I thought. My “real life” was starting. I was somewhere, and on my way to being someone.