Hard Work & Sweat Never Fail

While I would love to tell you about the general experience of “college-hopping” (That is, visiting numerous campuses in hopes that one springs to life before your very eyes and shouts, “Pick me, pick me!”), I can tell you about the general experience from a secondhand eye, and explain to you what on earth you should expect, from a student/human point of view. Savvy?

College is as college does. You can go to Yale and end up working as a semi-satisfied partner of a slowly degenerating humbug of a business, or you be Tom Hanks and go to a small college in Sacramento and turn out to be Tom Hanks. However, it does help if you’re Tom Hanks. If you are, I congratulate you and I humbly request that you take a look at my reel and a recent screenplay I’ve written about a quirky old man with a heart of gold?

So, when you are inevitably overwhelmed by the amount of pressure you feel on picking the right school, finding a dorm-mate that doesn’t smell like Swiss cheese or turn your antique lava lamp into a makeshift bong, I want you to take a deep breath (And I mean a deep breath, none of that shallow stuff. I mean like if Captain Hook was coming after you and you had to hide in a mermaid grotto and the water was rising. That kind of deep breath) and just relax. It’s fine. You are still you, despite the protests from universities that you can’t truly be complete without them. It’s all going to be okay, just stay focused, positive and for goodness sakes, remember to live every day like you’re Glenn Coco.

When I was in my senior year of high school, there were dozens and dozens of letters for colleges that said things like “Come for a visit!” and “We care about your future!” and, of course, I was like, “Brown cares about my future?! I feel loved by this school whose geographical location I am unaware but whose name I am aware of!” Of course, that was before I turned it over and found out it was for a summer program for pre-grads, not from the actual university. But I liked to pretend it was. Some of you will actually receive letters from schools like that, and some of you won’t. But, who cares? You make your life what you make your life. No school is going to do that for you. Will some schools offer more opportunities in terms of connections, internships, higher-up priority? Yes. Will some people be able to afford those schools and some people will not? Absolutely. This is an inevitable fact. While everyone is entitled to a quality education, not everyone earns the right to attend an Ivy League through their hard work, or receive the opportunity through old money and new ideas. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the same chance to fight like mad for what we want. So, when you’re choosing a college, when you’re checking out the campus cafeteria (we all know that’s what you check out first), remember that the school you choose does not make you who you are, you do. It was facilitates a window of opportunity to step into the man or woman you are going to become.

Hard work and sweat never fail, and mistakes are going to be made. If Michael Caine can star in movies like “Jaws 3: The Revenge” and still have a respected career, than you can certainly make something of yourself despite your fears and failures. Be proud of who you are, where you go, what you do. Step out and be bold in the classes and in the classes that don’t.

I’m writing this on a plane to Tokyo, listening to French pop-musicals, because I am that cool. I write for this blog, develop ideas daily, write far too much for things that don’t matter and neglect things that do, and I daydream far too often. I’m a nutcase and a scatterbrain, and I feel a false sense of eclecticism most of the time. But guess what? I have gumption, I tell you. I am a college student who believes in a future of promise, despite myself. My dreams are expensive and somewhat confusing, but again, who cares? I am almost twenty years old and I am going to dream wildly like I did when I was nine. Why not? So you do that. Don’t just look for some school that’s going to impress those mean twins from The Social Network, look for your nine-year-old self. I promise that’s okay. When you step onto a campus, think about the beautiful possibilities that are inevitably present in its sidewalks, regardless of whether of not those sidewalks were walked by a past president or not.

Life is beautiful and full of uproarious opportunity, should you choose to explore it. I intend to study abroad in my education, have my screenplay selected for the Senior Film Festival, attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London after I earn my degree here, and there isn’t nothing in the world that is going to stop me.

And I’m a broke, singular, and somewhat delusional young thing. So whoever you are, you’re better off than me. If you have half the confidence in the future that I do, whoever you are, than you’ll be more than okay. Trust me.