Just in time for Tony Smith’s lunch-time talk on work-life balance, we have this article from David Brooks about the life of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

As Brooks writes:

This isn’t the old story of a career woman trying to balance work and family. This is the story of pressures that affect men as well as women (men are just more likely to make fools of themselves in response, as the news of the last few years indicates). It’s the story of people in a meritocracy that gets more purified and competitive by the year, with the time demands growing more and more insistent.

Sounds painfully real… and yet, who can argue with her success and the impact of her life?