College and the responsibilities that came with it helped me transition from teenager to adulthood.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
College was just so essential for my sense of self and my development.
By the time I reached high school my father's grocery store had made our life adequately comfortable and I was able to choose, without any practical encumbrances, the subjects that I wanted to pursue in college.
I went to a public high school that had a very small graduating class of 156 students. I lived a relatively normal childhood until I turned probably around 16. Things started to take off career-wise.
I think I really benefited from going to college.
I willed myself through a junior college to a university and, ultimately, a Ph.D.
My parent's divorce and hard times at school, all those things combined to mold me, to make me grow up quicker. And it gave me the drive to pursue my dreams that I wouldn't necessarily have had otherwise.
I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path.
I went to a public high school, and after graduation, college wasn't really much of an option for me. I didn't believe I had the money or the grades at the time, so I continued to work and save money to support my acting career.
I didn't have any of those good assets to have successful teenage years. It was hard. And what saved me was definitely my whole family. I knew where I was coming from and where I was going to.
When I was 18 I went to college for two years and didn't work for a year which was essential for me, because my identity had been so influenced by my being an actor and I think I just needed to discover what it was to be myself, divorced from all that responsibility.