I told myself I'd stay in until I reached major, and then go on and do something else.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If I thought I had hurt my chances of winning another major just because I was chasing money around, I'd wind up kicking myself.
People wrote me off, but I believed in myself. I got the confidence back, and it grew and grew. I won my first major and my last at the place that changed my life.
I was taking electives, and that branched into theater. Theater led to me taking a break during the summer between my junior and senior year. After I graduated, I ended up moving out to L.A. But in my senior year, I made it a part of my major.
Winning a major, that's what everybody wants to do, and I worked my whole life to do it. And to realize that, it's incredible.
It was really unusual to go from being in university for four years to all of a sudden acting every day. I'd never been able to do it exclusively like that. It was always sort of like my secret thing that I did privately.
I willed myself through a junior college to a university and, ultimately, a Ph.D.
In high school, I worked eight hours a day just so I could get into the college of my dreams and say that I got in - and I never went.
I didn't want to settle or become complacent after winning a major, I wanted to stay hungry. It's easy to do. It's easy to win a big tournament and kind of get a little lazy, so it's been a good motivator for me to work a little harder.
I kept going to different colleges, but dropped out.
Everyone I went to school with went to university, or took a year off and then went, and that was the norm - so I did the same thing.