I have seen the cell phone, HDTV, the Internet and the SUV become entrenched in the vocabulary and consumption of society. I’ve seen the stock market and a few of my own investments rise to unheard of heights thanks to the late ‘90s dot com companies and seen the market and those investments fall just as fast when Clinton left office and Enron became an adjective for greed.
I’ve lost loved ones, dear friends and valuable mentors. I’ve had great fortune and bitter disappointment. I’ve kissed movie stars and won big in Vegas. I’ve been on national television and in neighborhood theatres. I’ve had a full career as an actor and a writer and I have given it all up more than once.
I’ve led a pretty full life up to the present and had some amazing experiences, but all of those developments and moments in time seem like estuaries and inlets in the river of my life. More importantly are the things I have seen grow and change within the main channel of myself. I’ve become a man, husband, father – a more complete person, and little of it has been because of my time in college – a span of roughly 15 years of on-again-off-again study where I made many small mistakes and one big one.
The beginning started out well enough. It was the fall of 1989. I was a cocky, smiling freshman ready to soak up as much knowledge as I could find. I was an idealist. I wanted to heal, save and change the world. I enrolled as a pre-med major, but I had a passion for acting and performing.
From the start, I enjoyed the entire collegiate experience. I made friends – good friends that fed me intellectually, socially and emotionally. I joined a fraternity, dated girls and tested the limits of my freedom.
I performed in my first play at Rhodes College my second semester there. For the role, I was chosen Best Supporting Actor in town by the Memphis Theatre Awards, a poor man’s Tony award for the river city.
Somewhere along the way I realized I spent more time in the theater and less in the biology lab. I liked the people better in the theater and liked the activities more as well. Theater classes never seemed like work to me. I thought it was my life’s calling, so I changed my major to Theater in preparation for my future career as an actor and writer.
All my life, or at least since I can remember, I have had a passion for acting, for performing. I was good at it and the craft fulfilled me. When I was on stage I could affect people. I could take people on a journey and show them things that they couldn’t see by themselves. Acting was never about being famous for me. It was about sharing something that might make a difference in someone’s life.
As for medicine, at Rhodes I started envisioning myself as an unhappy orthopedic surgeon. In my mind, I saw myself as this 40-year-old, depressed, isolated person that was drinking too much and empty inside. I knew I didn’t want that future. With no fear and no regrets I turned to the silver muse of acting.
With my life path in focus, I pursued the dream with zeal. I walked the boards at the theater with purpose. I honed my craft. I embraced the idea of learning for learning’s sake so that I would be a well-rounded person with enough understanding of liberal arts to be a credible character in whatever role I took.
My grades were average, not what I was capable of but good enough. I took classes in philosophy, literature, art and writing. I stayed on a degree plan, but I was there to learn, remember, so I took a number of classes that had nothing to do with graduating. The diploma was a by-product of the process not the endgame.
Then during the last semester of my senior year things fell apart. The center could not hold. I had put myself in substantial debt. My grandfather passed away. I was drinking too much, and I had broken up with my fiancée. Things were dismal as I remember, and hope had left on a barge down the Mississippi river.
Six weeks before graduation I withdrew from all my classes.
I have told people that I left school so that I could move out to Los Angeles and become a professional actor. That was a lie. The actual, true, down-to-the bone reason I dropped out was that I couldn’t and wouldn’t follow through.
I’ve been living under the shadow of that failure ever since.
Fortunately my story doesn’t end there and I’ll tell you why. I had an angel that helped me back to my feet. The angel was Shannon – the fiancée whose heart I tore and my current wife. For reasons I’ve never been able to understand, she took me back after I foolishly left her and we moved to Los Angeles.
Shannon gave me a second chance. Shannon was the one who paid my bills and got me out of debt. Shannon was the one who brought love and happiness back in to my life. Shannon was the one who helped me put my grandfather’s memory in perspective.
Let me say this. My wife is a better person than me. She works harder than me, is prettier than me, smarter than me. She makes me want to be a good person. To be sure, she has gained from me as well. She is more outgoing and more confident since we have been together. She laughs because she thinks I’m funny and has learned that not everyone is a perfectionist like her. She is more easy-going and content. But I’m the one who has benefited most from our partnership. Without her I wouldn’t be half the man I am today.
So we drove out west in a U-Haul till we saw the Pacific, parked on a beach and started our new life together.
I did my best to put my university failure behind me. I came out to be an actor, my dream, and set about trying to break in. I busied myself with finding a job to pay the bills and getting an agent and manager for the acting. After the first few months, the sting of Rhodes diminished to a throb and I fell in love with southern California.
Tom Joad went to California. So did Led Zeppelin and I can understand the reasons. The area is beautiful. Mountains, beaches, rivers and the desert are all within about an hour drive. The people there are friendly, although you may have heard different. With the exception of my wife, I met my dearest friends in L.A. For someone that is young and unencumbered by a lot of responsibilities, I would recommend highly going to that city.
Shannon and I settled in to L.A. like a well-worn pair of Levis. We both found jobs. I found a manager and then an agent. I started going on auditions and performed in little theaters to showcase my talent. Acting – or rather auditioning – became as much a job as my nighttime bartending gig. After the first year in which I unlearned all the foolish things I thought I knew about being a professional actor, I could finally call myself an actor and mean it.
The auditions became more numerous and soon the callbacks outnumbered the first looks. I booked a Volkswagen commercial and then a series of national commercials for Coors Light. I was getting looks by major casting directors and read for television shows and wide release movies. I was meeting people at auditions that I regularly saw on the big and small screen, and became known enough to warrant auditions by reputation.
My relationship with my wife was growing and deepening as well. After our first pass at engagement we were both a little wary of marriage. She wanted to make sure that I was true to my word and I didn’t want to make another mistake. But the message was clear. Shannon was perfect for me. So on a vacation to New York, after looking at the city from our hotel rooftop, I proposed with 10 rings – one for each finger.
We married on May 25, 1996 in a beautiful old Victorian house in Pasadena – the real Pasadena if you ask me, the one in California – surrounded by family and friends. The night was wonderful. The bride was beautiful. Most people cried and everyone danced and drank more than they should have. Many of my friends and family still speak of it as one of the best weddings that took place in the ‘90s. I would agree.
Yet with the success, good fortune and deep love I was enjoying, that old failure to finish school never stopped gnawing at me. I still told my parents that I was going to finish school, that I would start classes just as soon as my schedule eased up. I let friends and co-workers believe I had graduated. All of the people I met in L.A. thought I was a college graduate and I went along with the lie. I was too embarrassed to tell even my closest friends, the friends I shared almost everything with, that I had dropped out. I lived the lie so well that I even fooled myself into thinking that I would finish my degree sometime, but deep down I knew I wasn’t going back to school.
So I kept on keeping on as an actor. Hundreds of auditions came and went, and some jobs came out of the work. I also found a writing partner and started writing movie and TV scripts. I joined a comedy improv troupe called The Groundlings. I was doing all of the things I had set out to do except getting regular work. There had been a few times when I felt like I was just at the cusp of making it when something would set me back.
Twice I thought I had landed a lead role in a major picture. Both times I had auditioned and read and screen tested more than 10 times for the part. In both cases the decision came down to me and one other person. Both times it was the other person. Both of those actors still have strong careers and anytime I see them in a magazine or on screen I feel that disappointment.
In the back of my mind I started to feel that college failure coming on again. I had tried and worked hard, but I wasn’t making it over the hump. In fairness, making it in Hollywood is tough. Many times talent and drive are not enough. There are countless people I met in my time in Hollywood that were wonderful actors, supremely talented. They worked and networked with the best of them, but they still went back to whatever small town they were from with failure sitting next to them on the Greyhound.
The auditions became scarcer and I lost my commercial agent. Thanks to Dawson’s Creek, most of the shows on television were looking for actors in their early 20s. I was past that. My time to break in to the business had passed me by. The reality of the situation was frightening because once again I had failed to follow through.
I was still at The Groundlings and was still writing. In fact, I sold one of my screenplays. I still auditioned when one came along and booked a couple of jobs towards the end. The truth though was that my heart wasn’t in it anymore. Shannon had become pretty successful in her job. Through an amazing stoke of luck I won a house, or actually enough money to buy a decent house. Shannon became pregnant; we got a dog. After our first son, Austin, was born we had a great little family. Everything outside of my career was roses.
Subconsciously I had made the decision to give up the dream of being a working actor long before I admitted it to Shannon and myself. Giving up a dream is one of the toughest and loneliest decisions one can make. No one cheers you on or pats you on the back when time comes to let go. But giving up dreams is part of growing up, and I made a difficult decision. I wanted to be more for my family than a struggling actor running around to auditions during the day and slinging gin at night while my son grew up without his father.
I also missed my parents, brother and sister. I had grown apart from them while on the West Coast. I was always close to my family but distance and lifestyle had let me drift from them. Plus, my son needed to be around his grandparents.
Shannon seemed to be growing tired of L.A. as well. To advance in her career she needed to be able to relocate. When a promotion opportunity became available in Houston, she applied and got the job.
As we prepared to leave our home of nine years, I tried to put things in order. I was giving up my dream and admitting I was a failure yet again. I was also leaving a few dear friends, special people that could not be replaced. I knew I was doing the best thing for my family, but it was still painful. I had no career direction, and since I had dropped out of school, I didn’t have a lot of prospects. I went to Houston blind and fearful. The only thing I knew was that I was a husband and father. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, but I figured I would find out in Houston.
I will always cherish my career as a Hollywood actor. I look back at tapes of my work and I’m proud. I was good. I did affect people. I was brave enough to try to make it in that cannibalistic, fake, egocentric and unforgiving world. Although I wasn’t a success I count my time there well spent. That isn’t to say I didn’t come away without any scars. I’m not close to the same person I was before L.A.
I’m no longer idealistic. I’m cynical to the point of bitterness in many areas. Don’t try to convince me that life is fair and people are generally altruistic because I have seen with my own eyes that is not the case. My skin is thicker than a Kevlar vest. Nobody can be rejected thousands of times and told you were too fat, too skinny, too dumb, not charismatic, unfunny, too plain and not good enough over and over without it having a detrimental effect. I don’t smile much anymore and I’m not good at making friends. In many ways pursuing acting in Hollywood emptied my soul. The soul is ever replenishing though, and since I left that town I have been steadily filling it up.
We moved to Houston, bought a nice house and began our new life. We see my parents more, which is a blessing. Shannon settled in to her new position and excelled. But I wasn’t happy. I had no direction, no focus. Obviously I had to do something. In the end, one choice stood out like a lighthouse beacon. I had to go back to school. On one level, I had to find a career and the only way to do that was to get a degree in something, but on a deeper level, I had to make up for that foolish decision that had been weighing me down for so many years. Pride and fear were the only things standing in my way, and after what I had gone through and experienced, they both seemed silly at that point.
So I enrolled at the University of Houston, and guess what; getting my degree has been a wonderful experience. I went to classes eagerly and made good grades. I’ve kept to myself and studied. I have learned a great deal, more than I thought I would. I found that I was a decent writer to begin with, so I studied journalism and have become a better one. I enjoyed classes like political science and logic that would have bored me when I was 20. I ended up being a much better student than I was at Rhodes.
With the exception of a couple of teachers, I didn’t make any friends, but that’s fine. As I said, I don’t do well at making friends anymore. But I have made a difference in some people’s lives while at UH, specifically in the theater department where my experiences have left me with a unique perspective about becoming an actor. I hope that some of my hard-earned wisdom was left just south of Cullen Boulevard.
So here I am just a couple CLEP tests and two classes away from finally getting a degree – two of them in fact since I am a double major. I should graduate summa cum laude, which is absolutely hilarious. Apparently UH only calculates grade point average on the classes taken here, so I was given a clean slate.
A clean slate.
That’s one of the better ironies I’ve heard. My slate is far from clean. I have enough baggage to make a trans-Atlantic voyage by dinghy. Still, by finally graduating I can, in some way, make up for the mistake that has spent 15 years as a monkey on my back. A degree won’t make up for all the time wasted since I dropped out back in April of 1993, but it will be a worthy piece of paper – something to show for my efforts. I have worked hard for it and know the value of a diploma. For all my faults and failures, I will no longer be a college dropout.
Don’t misunderstand me here. I don’t want to appear sappy about this. I’m not particularly proud of finally getting my degree. I’m not walking for graduation, and I’m sending back any gift that someone would be deluded enough to send to me. I don’t feel I should be lauded for finally finishing something I should have done years ago. I’ve disappointed a lot of people along the way and wasted tens of thousands of dollars. Instead of hearing “congratulations,” I expect to hear “it’s about time you dumbass.”
I would also like to dispel the belief that a person must truly want to do something for himself to accomplish his goal. I have heard this said about giving up alcohol or quitting smoking. I think it’s bunk. Far more power and commitment can come from doing something for others.
No, the decision to go back to school wasn’t made for me. To be honest, I didn’t want to be a student again. Sure there was the fear of starting the entire process again and wondering how I would do, but deep down I felt (and still feel) that a person can learn as much or as little as he wants wherever he happens to be.
My loved ones were the impetus for my return to school. My parents spent a great deal of money during my first four years at Rhodes, taking out loans and doing without things they deserved. There has been a cloud hanging over the relationship with them. Although they have always supported me and been a part of my successes, I could see the disappointment in their faces – especially my father’s – anytime the subject of college arose. My father was the first in his family to finish college, and my mom is the most brilliant woman I have ever known. They deserve a son who graduated from college after they worked so hard to get me there.
I also went back to school for my lovely wife. The magical women that has always worked harder than me, she who is smarter and better looking than me. She finished what she started in regards to school, and I knew she believed I should have done the same. For all she has done for me, I owed her at least that much.
And I did it for my boys. They need to have two parents that have graduated from college. Austin and Jackson are being raised in a house that values and encourages education. They are expected to be brilliant and diligent – by the way, they are … and funny and handsome as well. They have two intelligent parents, and they both are curious, inquisitive and introspective. For me to tell them they need to graduate from college would be rather hypocritical if I never ventured back to remove the “drop out” label.
My time at UH has been some of the most fulfilling years of my life. Mainly because I have spent the past two and a half years correcting a decade old mistake, but also because I have learned more about myself than I would have without going back to school.
I’m still not sure what I am going to do for a career. I feel confident that I could be a good reporter and I’ll have the degree to prove it. I would also be a good teacher. I might try that. Whatever I decide to do, I’ll be better able to approach it. I don’t have that feeling of failure hanging over me anymore. I’m still a failure, many times over, but I wear it like a badge now. I have exercised a lot of demons, and I know that it is possible to succeed. I have succeeded with my family and now I’ve succeeded at school.
I’ll show you the diplomas when I get them framed.
