My mom was on welfare and the occasional food stamp, but I have never participated in any of those governmental programs, even the ones that kind of work like education, scholarships and whatever, and I managed to do just fine.
I was born in Chicago, then I spent most of my youth in Joliet, Illinois which is about thirty minutes south, and I went to a military academy for high school in Wisconsin. Then I went to college, on a basketball scholarship to a small school in Iowa, so I'm like Mr. Midwest.
I attended Florida State University on an academic and leadership scholarship, changed my major from biology to broadcasting, and transferred to the University of South Carolina for my last two years.
Although my other ambition was to be a musical theater star (and I would attend college on a voice scholarship), writing was never far from my mind.
My senior school didn't play football. It was a rugby and cricket school, and as I was on a sports scholarship, I was forced to play rugby.
I'm saving money like there's no tomorrow because, when I was at Juilliard, I had so little. They gave me a full scholarship because I didn't come from a wealthy family or anything.
I went into academia thinking that there'd be constant reciprocity between my scholarship and my creative work but found that doing one always turned my mind into the sort of tool that was badly suited to doing the other.
You don't want to hear about how much money I donate to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America or to AIDS awareness or to give out scholarships. You don't want to hear about that.
I went to Indiana University for college for a couple of years, where I double majored in dance and journalism, and after my sophomore year there, I went to the San Francisco Ballet school for the summer, but then they offered me a scholarship to stay for the year.
I was from Washington, D.C., and then I came to New York and got the scholarship for the ballet.