We Used to Get Jobs

The author reflects on landing a dream job as a staff photographer at Polo Ralph Lauren in 2000 through a New York Times classified listing, then uses digital archives—including access to 150 years of scanned newspapers and his saved emails—to verify this memory by actually locating the original job posting from January 16, 2000. The piece explores how easily personal memories can become unreliable over time and how digital tools now allow us to fact-check our own narratives in ways that weren't previously possible.