I did not want to go out at 5:30 in the morning with my stocking cap and my navy pea coat on and shoot lines and grades for the rest of my life.
Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege.
Because grades in climbing are subjective, I am fan of making big gaps between climbing grades.
I had great grades. Why? Because I studied twice as long and twice as hard as everybody else.
I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me.
When I went to acting school, the kids that got the best grades were the kids that could cry on cue. But it didn't really translate into careers for any of them, because the external is the easy part.
I don't really think I got the full high school experience, only because when I got to high school for the first year, it was grades 9-10. We didn't have older grades. But besides that, it was normal. It was a regular public school. We didn't have much going on. It wasn't too crazy.
I am really close to my mum. She always made me do my school and make sure I got all my grades. She is a physiotherapist, which is a massive help to me, so in terms of nutrition, she was the one who made sure I was eating all the right food, and I can only thank her that she kept me fit and healthy.
To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said 'please' and 'thank you.'
I knew I needed to find a way to stay out of trouble and to have good grades to be able to stand out.
