Amy Chozick

Growing up in San Antonio, I was the dork at the Friday night football games with my head buried in a book - Jack Kerouac or Oscar Wilde, years before I really understood them.

So many women have had to make these sacrifices - putting off having kids, letting their husbands down - for some career opportunity. Mine just happened to be covering the woman trying to become the first woman president.

Throughout her career, many women would view Mrs. Clinton as an imperfect vessel for the feminist cause. She was a Yale-educated lawyer who, at the height of the 1970s women's movement, moved to Arkansas to put her own ambitions on hold in furtherance of her husband's career.

Part of a campaign reporter's job is allowing yourself to be used.

I grew up in a quiet suburb in South Texas, and loved the in-your-faceness of the East Village. In the early days, when I was still unemployed, I'd lie on a bench in Tompkins Square Park perusing the listings in the 'Village Voice' for a place to live.

I was crashing with a boyfriend on his couch in Fort Green. At first, I was temping - insurance agencies, nonprofits - and then, in between temping, I was going on job interviews, and I could name 12 publications, some of which no longer exist, that didn't even call me back or interviewed me and had no interest.

It's fun to play a part in the process of helping to inform readers about their political leaders.

Every major life decision in my 20s and 30s - when to get married, where to buy an apartment, whether to freeze my eggs until after the election - had revolved around a single looming question: What about Hillary Clinton?

I read contrived memoirs by presidential candidates. For every 'Dreams From My Father' - Barack Obama's honest, literary portrayal of his biracial upbringing - there were a dozen cautious, formulaic vanity projects by politicians.

In 2007, I went straight from Tokyo to Iowa to join Hillary Clinton's traveling press. I felt like a foreigner there, too. I remember thinking, 'Americans are huge.'

I think you find stories with fresh perspectives, and there can be a danger in the opposite way when you start getting too cynical and things just don't start seeming like stories, and things don't seem exciting anymore. It's like, 'Yep, this is my fourth caucus, and I know everybody and know everything and I am writing just to impress my friends.'