Before Hank Azaria blessed the tube with The Simpsons, he was a “pretty good student.” Of course, this only lasted until his junior year of high school (which would have been 1979-1980… before common era), when he was cast as King Arthur in a high school adaption of Camelot and he subsequently neglected his studies entirely. He booked his first gig on his first professional audition (for a product called Brooklyn Gum on Italian television, after which he didn’t work professionally for nearly seven years). Consequently, Saint Hank’s grades plummeted and he was waitlisted at Brown, Georgetown, and Tufts University. It was only because an admissions officer at Tufts bought Azaria’s plea, and rant about how he broke his both elbows in a freak basketball accident senior year, hook, line, and sinker that he ended up a drama major at Tufts (Georgetown didn’t buy it, and the Brown guy considered it).
When Azaria marched with Tufts’ graduating class in the spring of 1985, he received an empty box instead of a diploma. He ended up a few credits short of his degree and a few credits over the maximum number of failed courses allowed. It wasn’t until he coordinated the last two or three classes he needed to complete his drama major, in Los Angeles, and had the credits transferred that he officially graduated with Tufts’ class of 1987.
It is dubious as to whether graduates ever really listen to the keynote address or famed guest speaker at their commencement. When Azaria shared this narrative – peppered with jabs at Boston University and his Simpsons voices – with Tufts’ class of 2016 this past May, students listened. (You can find the transcript here).
The real point of his story, or the all-encompassing life lesson which he was invited to share with the graduates, was this:
Completing my drama major two years late made me realize that even though I had taken my own weird and atypical and borderline bizarre path, I could follow that road and get to the same place that the world wanted me to get to, even if I didn’t do it in a quote-on-quote ‘conventional’ fashion… I don’t think it registered on me at the time, but the notion that I could do things my way, even if that was a way that no one had ever done before or would ever care to do again, it was valid and unique and ultimately viable.
Students are trained to believe that the four-year plan is the only plan to follow: you commit to a four-year university already trapped with your major; dabble in bullshit extracurricular organizations with the notion that playing with rescue puppies is really volunteerism; apply to internships laden with remedial labor; and learn not how to think, but what a given professor wants you to think. Somewhere along the way you find yourself – or a significant other with a promising verbal offer from corporate. Four years of binge drinking and playing hookie then culminate in a piece of paper in which you find your validation and self-worth, and suddenly, the world is your oyster.
The dawning of a new year, and all of the changes that it will inevitably bring about, is horrifying. The thought of half of my friends graduating and really “adulting,” and the other half of my friends embarking upon their senior years while I enjoy my red-shirt junior year (one of many consequences of transferring halfway through college and changing majors) is even worse. The most unnerving sentiment, however, is that I have totally derailed my trek through higher education and that I have possibly professionally jeopardized myself.
However, I find solace in Azaria’s – considerably – convoluted journey. There is no right way to do something – just your way.
