Although professors regard improving critical thinking as the most important goal of college, tests reveal that seniors who began their studies with average critical thinking skills have progressed only from the 50th percentile of entering freshmen to about the 69th percentile.
I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, 'You can like Mozart and ice hockey...' - and then I used to say 'golf,' but Tiger took over golf! - 'and Picasso and still be as black as the ace of spades.'
Recently my publicist asked me for a college photo, and I realize how chubby I looked. I know this sounds totally shallow, but my advice is don't fall prey to the freshmen fifteen!
Harvard freshmen are smart, interested, and excited, and it's fun hearing their different perspectives and stuff that they will share.
You can think of Hollywood as high school. TV actors are freshmen, comedy actors are maybe juniors, and dramatic actors - they're the cool seniors.
I came out of the private sector, a life that I enjoyed. I sleep in a bed every night with a woman I went to first grade with. I wasn't running for a job. I was running - and I think you will find this to be the case with many of the freshmen - to produce results.
When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big band - with those dark chords and musicians who could swing cool with individual sounds.
I was a freshman and auditioned for the school play. Freshmen usually never got cast. I was the first freshman to be actually given a legitimate part and it was that feeling of 'Wow! I broke the system!'
If I had to give one piece of advice to incoming college freshmen, I'd say always be true to yourself.
Ask Jeeves! Who ever used that thing? College freshmen to find out who Goethe was - that's it.