Times change, and right now what people need is, they need to be able to send their kids to college, they need to able to buy a house.
I graduated high school and I didn't have a skill set and I didn't want to go to college. I needed a job.
Before college, I acted in my room, to classical music, because music tells stories. I'd put on a record and proceed, silently. I'd keep putting the needle back to a certain segment because I hadn't died well enough. I had to really, really feel dead. I'd love to do a death scene.
I've wanted to act since I was little, but my parents told me I couldn't pursue it until after college. The understanding was that I was lucky enough to be able to go to college and that it's important to being successful in life.
When I graduated from college in early 2010, I decided that I needed to create a calling card, some kind of business card that people can link to my name and face. So I did this 'Mad Men Theme Song...With a Twist' music video. I released it just as I moved to L.A.
I always wanted to play a mental patient. I was fascinated with playing crazy people in college, and I don't know if I ever quite perfected it.
I like to surf. I like to play guitar. I want to do college classes online. I wanted to do marine biology for a long time, but I don't know.
When I came right out of college I remember someone pulling me aside and telling me how to exactly fit in. How to wear my hair, what clothes I should wear, even how I should talk and wave or not wave or hold my hands. I wish I never had that conversation. It held me back for like two years and it took me a while to learn this myself, but the idea that you are your own brand, and you are your own person.
I was dishwasher, then promoted to chef in a local kitchen in a restaurant in Seattle, and I was working on a building site as well, putting in insulation and painting houses, and then doing some classes at a community college nearby.
I lived on my own when I was living in New York City when I was 18, working on a show. And that definitely kind of grows you up a little faster than a normal 18-year-old in college, so I think so. I think I've got some street smarts.
I'm actually one of the few kids in my grade, especially girls, who didn't end up going to college, just because I already knew what I wanted to do. I had already been actively working in music before I graduated.
I tried to take a few community college classes, but it got in the way of music, so I stopped. I had real life college and traveling on the road college. It's like a segue into adulthood, like living on your own for the first time.
The only reason I got into broadcasting was, I needed money to pay for my junior and senior years at college, and they hired me, those fools!
Our obsessive focus on college schooling has blinded us to basic truths. College is a place, not a magic formula. It matters what subjects students study, and subsidies should focus on the subjects that matter the most - not to the students, but to everyone else.
Going to college is neither necessary nor sufficient to be well-educated.
I was in college in Washington, D.C. I did three years full-time. I did all my requirements and my senior year was really a gut year. And I said, law school will always be there. I was in no hurry to get right into that.
Many years ago, in the late '70s, I toured colleges along the East Coast and I presented a kind of show where I got a lot of books and poetry and pieces of [William] Shakespeare and other writers that I admire, read it to the class and then afterward we would talk and I would answer questions. It was really a way of expressing and finding out about where I was at that particular time, so it was very therapeutic for me.
The Minnesotans I talk to are really concerned about what the future holds for their families. They're trying to pay for health care and send their kids to college, they're worried about declining home values, they're scared for a loved one they have serving in Iraq.
My family was very supportive of my acting. They didn't really have a choice because I got jobs acting before anyone could really say anything. It paid my way through college and helped my family out.
I was not one of those people who wanted to be a comedian when I was growing up. I liked comedy, but didn't know it was something you could do for a living. I actually wanted to be an attorney. I did do things on the side like improv and sketch comedy, but law was my focus. I was a very bookish, academic kid. When I got out of college, I was really unhappy. I had a great job that I should have loved, yet I was miserable. I slowly realized that was because I wasn't performing. So I just tried stand-up and fell in love with it after one performance.
Very early on in this process though I studied acting in high school and college, soon after graduation, I walked away from the craft because I wanted to know that this is what I was supposed to do with my life.
I took acting classes in my senior year in college and I loved it.
I have to throw in on a personal note that I didn't like history when I was in high school. I didn't study history when I was in college, none at all, and only started to do graduate study when my children were going to graduate school. What first intrigued me was this desire to understand my family and put it in the context of American history. That makes history so appealing and so central to what I am trying to do.
When I do stand-up shows at colleges, girls will talk to me after the show, and that always feels good. I like talking to them.
Actually, I am loathe to admit, but I also remember freshman year of Emory - and I'm so sorry to have to admit this - but there was a Domino's Pizza in Emory Village, where I went to college, and I was ordering a pizza.
