Or Overheard in Santa Monica. A true risk-taker college friend–no matter what they tell you 95% of Duke grads are not bust-out thinkers and leaders but instead very bright, pleasant, straight-up bourgeois citizens who play it safe; ironically, and by stealth, my intellectually über-wide open beloved alma mater even teaches them how to do this so they can replicate their parents if they so chose*–who failed miserably a bunch of times in the movie business but finally made it big in the writing-production side of nighttime television has this saying: “Dude, I’ve been broke–but I’ve never been poor.” I love that.
* I loved Duke and am grateful beyond words to have been admitted. I expected that the university and my classmates would change my life in wonderful ways–and they did. I chose it over Dartmouth and some other fine schools. But we should all expect the world’s “great” universities to drive new ideas, produce new kinds of people and make everyone, frankly, a little uncomfortable. They should never uphold the status quo.
Tobacco entrepreneur James B. Duke. West Campus, Duke University.