I only had one year of eligibility and I wasn't getting many offers from other schools. I jumped on it to make a mark. That was the most wise decision I made coming out of Oklahoma junior college.
I was tempted my junior year to go out of college and forgo my eligibility. I had broken several world records. I did have a lot of people telling me that I should go pro.
When I went to college, I went to a junior college. I wanted to go to the University of Alabama but had to go to junior college first to get my GPA up. I did a half-year of junior college, then dropped out and had my daughter. College was always an opportunity to go back. But she, my daughter, was my support. I gave up everything for her.
I have a wife and two boys. One is 18 and the other is 14. The 18-year old is getting ready for college next year and he made a decision to run track. He runs a lot like Michael Johnson.
Your life can change in one year. You can go from a nobody, not even getting any playing time on a college team, to being one of the most highly touted quarterbacks coming out of college for the draft.
Everybody had to go to some college or other. A business college, a junior college, a state college, a secretarial college, an Ivy League college, a pig farmer's college. The book first, then the work.
So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.
My co-founder Dylan Smith and I left our junior year of college to move to the Bay Area. To the horror of our friends' parents, we actually had two other friends drop out of college to work on the product. The four of us were just working non-stop growing Box.
In my junior year in college, I was getting kind of tired of French. So, I took an economics course, and I loved it. The rest of my two years in college I spent in economics.
Out of college, I had two job offers. One was to be a canoe instructor for Outward Bound. And frankly, that would have paid better than the job I took, working on a policy commission in Washington that focused on immigration policy and refugees. But that decision made all the difference.
I dropped out of college my junior year to do saturday night live, and I didn't even consult my parents. They were very supportive because they had no choice.
I dropped out of college my junior year to do Saturday Night Live, and I didn't even consult my parents. They were very supportive because they had no choice.
But, once again, when I said I'm so grateful for my mom just being adamant about me staying in public school - that is what allowed me to be exposed to so many different types of people. I went to a high school that was by the beach. I elected to do bussing my junior high school years. And my first year of high school, I would take the bus from my neighborhood to the beach schools. And at those schools, you had such a mix of so many types of kids.
When I was leaving college, getting ready to graduate with a degree in finance, I had job interviews for months and months - and nothing really was moving like a real opportunity. Meanwhile, a lot of my wrestling teammates at Oklahoma had started getting into MMA training.
A year before I met Mark Brydon - he was the one I used to make all the music with in Moloko - I was living in Sheffield with a guy who was studying architecture. I used to go to his college and crash the lectures there. I had enrolled to do a fine art course, but then I met Mark, and we signed a record deal instead.
The college recruiting process shouldn't be about how many schools have interest in you or how many offers you get, it should be about you finding the right school.
Indeed the Obamas, the Clintons, and many other elites who oppose school choice and make it harder for charter schools to operate, send their own children to private institutions that cost more than many Hispanic families make in a year.