In June of 1981, I graduated from Chumash High School as co-Valedictorian. At that point in time, I was a cocky eighteen year-old, so cocky that my future teaching mentor pulled me aside two days before graduation to intone these pearls of wisdom:
Take care out there...You’re going to where Valedictorians are a dime-a-dozen. You’ve been a big fuckin’ fish in this little tidepool... but you’re gonna be just a little guppy swimmin’ with sharks.
So true.
But in my mind, I was set for UCLA. I was a 4.0 Valedictorian with a 1410 SAT and a 4 AP in English. My valedictory was interrupted with applause. I was the BMOC. I was going to leave and never look back, let alone return. I was going to become a great film director.
Only I received a D- on my first paper in the first weeding-out course for the English major (a back-up major, I assured myself at the moment). Then I learned that no one received F’s on the first assignment. I never wanted anyone to feel that badly.
I lost my scholarship during my sophomore year.
Then I missed the cut, applying but not earning admission into the Motion Picture/Television major.
Of course, by the time I had submitted my application packet for MP/TV, I had already decided (or is that rationalized?) that MP/TV was the real back-up major, that I was going to earn my degree in English.
I was going to return to my hometown to teach.
Other former teachers, when I told them of my decision on trips back to the old stomping grounds, tried to convince me to rethink my decision. Another mentor, the late, great, Frankie Hunter, only smiled and shook her head.
What did she know that the others didn’t? What did she know that I didn’t?
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