Capitalizing on the Undergraduate Experience

During my time at Princeton, I was often enrolled in five to six of the most challenging classes I could find, was on two to three sports teams, had some iteration of a job, and was working on starting one or more companies of my own, amongst many other things. While I was off trying to tackle the world one day at a time, many of my classmates were manipulating their schedules, taking cookie-cutter classes to make sure that they got all As – even if that meant forgoing the opportunity to take some of the most challenging and interesting classes at one of the top universities in the world. Could I have done that? Absolutely. But I never have been and never will be that girl.

I’m not the girl who takes the easy way out. I’m the girl who takes risks through challenging myself to step outside of my comfort zone one day after another. I’m the girl who took advanced linear algebra with the math majors just because I wanted to learn it. I’m the girl who walked-on to the varsity diving team without ever having prior exposure to the sport.  I’m the girl who took countless acting classes because I had the opportunity to work with some of the most talented directors I would ever have the experience to work with.

I had the unique opportunity to spend four years attending what is arguably one of the top universities in the world, and I was determined to take full advantage of it. When presented with the experience of a lifetime, there was no way that I was going to allow myself to manipulate my schedule or to try to limit myself to taking only the classes that would highlight my strengths.  I live in the moment, and I constantly challenge myself to explore the areas of thought that I know the least about, and to take full advantage of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

When again in my life will I have the chance to study the role of passion in literature, or to study violent politics with some of the best minds in the field? While undergraduate life is a time to build upon your current skill set, it is also a time to expose your mind to new topics, even if it means that you may not always come out on top. In addition to pursuing the various topics that I am incredibly passionate about, I often instinctively pursue opportunities in the areas that I know the least about, as I feel that this is where the learning curve will be the steepest. Rather than going through my entire life trying to evade my weaknesses, I am constantly searching for ways to fill in my knowledge gaps and to build upon my current skill set, not just vertically but horizontally as well.

I love life, and I love taking risks. I am an inherently curious person and I want to learn as much about the world as possible. I can’t help it – it’s in my blood. For many people, having four years at a top-tier university is the dream of a lifetime; so rather than letting four years pass you by, fully commit to living out the dream that you worked so hard to achieve. The undergraduate experience is a unique time in a young person’s life – it is a time when you are not only learning about yourself, exploring your own interests and passions, but also learning about how to piece together the many aspects of the world around you. 

Many students find themselves dressed in their cap and gown on graduation day, wishing that they had taken that class that they were too nervous to take, or that they stayed late after class to talk to that professor that they always admired.  After you walk out of the gates on graduation day with your diploma in hand, there is no getting that time back. You have one opportunity to spend four years of your life selfishly focusing on exploring the questions that have always peaked your curiosity, and learning about yourself and the world around you. So rather than playing it safe and trying to conform to the consensus opinion – take risks. Take classes in subjects that you know the least about, build relationships with the professors whom you’ve always admired, learn to master a new sport, talk to people outside of your normal social circles, and push yourself a little bit further each and every day. Let your inner curiosity and deeper passions drive your everyday actions – I know I did, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not eternally grateful that I had the unique opportunity to spend four years of my life, pushing myself to new physical and intellectual limits at one of the top universities in the world. 

Five Reasons Every Child Should Take an Acting Class

Often when I speak on a panel, there is that one overly ambitious parent who raises their hand and asks how they can set their child up for success, or make their child ‘more like me’.  While I sit there contemplating which of the countless life lessons I’ve learned so far to share with a room full of people, my answer is usually some iteration of ‘put your child in an acting class.’  Out of everything that I could have possibly said, I’m sure that this is one of the last things that eager parents of current or future Ivy League students would expect to come out of my mouth.  Following my response, they usually look at me like I have five heads as they begin contemplating if I very well might be as crazy as I seem.

Yet every time I give a student or a parent this piece of advice, I stand by the fact that I think that the skill set that one develops through acting truly holds the potential to set an individual up for both personal and professional success.  After growing up doing TV voiceover work and performing in a series of plays and musicals, I continued to study acting from a more academic perspective in both high school and while at Princeton.  Acting has always been the one outlet where I feel like I can completely let myself go, and quite literally walk in someone else’s shoes.  Yet, it wasn’t until recently that I realized just how important my many years of training in acting have been in setting me up for personal and professional success. 

With that said, I think that no matter whether or not a child has any intention of pursuing acting on a serious level, every child should take at least one acting class before they reach adulthood.  Here are five of the reasons why:

1. You will get significantly better at reading people.  When you walk into a scene, you quickly need to figure out the relationship between the characters on stage, and find your place in the organizational hierarchy.  Understanding how to read people in a matter of seconds through picking up external cues is a key skill in the business world, from reading a manager in a meeting, to getting through the interview process for a job, or seeing just how far you can push a client before they reach the tipping point.

2. You will understand how to control your reactions.  Many directors will tell you that the hardest part of acting is not acting, but rather reacting.  While the audience often overlooks the importance of reactions in the progression of a plot line, reactions are the key to linking nonsensical pieces of dialogue together and building meaning.  Being able to control your reactions – from language, to tone, to body expression – is incredibly important in the workplace, as you are often caught off guard and forced to react properly even when your sympathetic nervous system is going crazy.

3. You will learn how to improvise.  While various aspects of a scene are rehearsed, one of the most important skills that an actor will learn is how to go ‘off-book’ and be so overtly aware of the smallest movements of the characters that they are interacting with, that they can instantaneously jump in and deviate if something goes wrong or is not as rehearsed.  Very often in business, we are caught off guard – maybe a potential investor brings up a competitor that we’ve never heard of or the customer asks you for a particular functionality that you had never even thought of building – and you have nothing left to do but to go off-book, to improvise. Through learning how to be quick on your feet and adjust to any situation, you will feel confident in your ability to handle yourself under pressure and thrive in the most challenging of situations.

4. You will start analyzing speech and body language on a more detailed level.  When you first begin studying acting, it will likely seem absurd that you will need to break apart text and craft your movements at such a detailed level of precision.  Through acting, you will learn to gain full control of your body and voice, and also learn how to analyze the movements and speech of others. By understanding how to read between the lines of people’s words and actions in a professional setting, this will give you greater insight into the situation.

5. You will learn to develop a clear objective and formulate multiple tactics in attempt to reach your objective.  When you first come to analyze a new scene in acting, one of the primary drivers of the work that you will do as a character will be your objective in the scene - what it is that you want to try to get from the other characters that shapes how you approach your dialogue and blocking.  Once you have a clear objective in a scene, you will learn to come up with a series of tactics or potential approaches that you will try to take in order to achieve your objective.  If one doesn’t work, you have to move on to the next one.  The ability to identify a clear objective and formulate tactics is extremely helpful in business, as it will allow you to maintain a laser focus and understand how to quickly move from one approach to another if your original tactic is not working as you planned.

Beyond the five core skills that you can expect to learn above, taking an acting class is important on a macro level because it teaches children how to open up, take risks, and express themselves at a young age.  While consistency and self-understanding is incredibly important, acting will teach you how to accent or highlight different parts of yourself in different situations, which is crucial in helping you to quickly adapt to the many challenges that we are confronted with along the way.

The 'It Factor'

With college admissions season right around the corner, the recurrent question of ‘what separates the few from the many’ is more pressing than ever.  In high schools around the world, college seniors are spending their days cramming SAT vocabulary and working through their extensive list of college applications, only to hope that someone behind closed doors on an admissions committee will think that they are one of the best of the best.  Amongst the many thousands of applicants that apply to the top schools each year, with near-perfect SAT scores and GPAs above a 4.0, what makes someone a standout?

There are plenty of students who appear to be qualified for these schools on paper, yet there are only a select number of spots for a mere handful of the very best to turn their dreams of being on top into a reality. While there is no exact formula for getting into the top schools, and no exact phenotypic makeup that deems someone a good fit to be in the next class at Harvard or Yale, there is one thing that recurrently separates the few from the many – and that is the ‘it factor’.  

Whether it be through informally mentoring students who are trying to navigate the complex high school journey, choosing my own friends and colleagues, or conducting alumni interviews for Princeton admissions, I can usually identify whether or not students have the ‘it factor’ after talking to them for only a few minutes.  Not every newly accepted Princeton or Harvard student looks the same – the ‘it factor’ can be packaged in a variety of different capacities, as it is not about product but rather about process.  The distinguishing factor between the ‘good’ and the ‘great’ lies in the journey as opposed to the destination – because the way that a person carves out a path to learn and grow as an individual is something that will continue to make them their own unique person for years to come. 

When you walk into a small discussion-based seminar at Princeton, the twelve students sitting around the table may not be the twelve smartest people you will ever meet; but the majority of those students are more than likely to have the ‘it factor.’  From my experience working with students who may be among the best of the best, I have found the following characteristics to be recurrent in determining whether or not someone has the ‘it factor.’

Grit. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room, as long as you are the person in the room who wants it the most.  It doesn’t matter if the road is bumpy or the path undefined, as long as you have the drive to carve out your own path to find the pot of gold at the end of the tunnel.

Curiosity.  Inherent curiosity is something that is hard to fake.  If you are inherently curious, the learning takes care of itself.  This is often something that can only be acquired through reading, understanding yourself, and playing an active role in the world around you.  If you let your inherent curiosity lead the way, you just have to follow your interests and passions and will begin to stumble upon more opportunities than you could ever imagine.

Selflessness. Being the smartest person in the room and acting like everyone else is below you will not get you very far – I’ve learned this from first-hand experience.  It took me a while to develop this characteristic, but eventually I came to see that you can really learn something from everyone.  If you approach life with a ‘no task is too small’ type of attitude, then you will gain the respect of those around you and become an inherently stronger leader and more complete individual.

Authenticity.  The ability to be true to yourself is an unmet quality.  Through identifying your strengths and admitting to your weaknesses, you are building a strong degree of self-awareness that will help you to continue to develop as a person both personally and professionally.  Rather than trying to be the person that you think will appeal to an interviewer, a prospective manager, or an admissions committee, just worry about being the best possible version of yourself. If you wake up with that goal in mind every single day, there is nobody who can beat you out at being uniquely you.

While these four characteristics are not all-encompassing, they are some of the recurrent features that I have identified in individuals who possess the ‘it factor’ across various age spans and industry verticals.  While some of these traits may be inherent, there are always ways to improve as a person through understanding where your time and energy is best spent.  And what better time to start than the present.