Doctor or Designer?

In French class in high school, there was one exercise where we went around the room saying what we wanted to do for a living. I remember responding either a doctor or a fashion designer.

My dad's a doctor and I liked science well enough, so it seemed like a viable possibility. The real reason I wanted to be a doctor though, was that I was hooked on the show ER and in love with George Clooney/Doug Ross. I had been a fan of Michael Crichton's books and enjoyed ER immensely.

However, I had never let go of the dream of being a designer. I would pore over copies of Vogue and doodle during class. My favorite designer at the time was Marc Jacobs. This was at least a decade ago, before Marc Jacobs became a household name.

While in high school, I took a class for high school students at Parsons. I ended up having to drop out though, because I didn't have enough time for it.

When senior year rolled around, it seemed silly to forfeit all the hard work I had done academically over the years to apply to design school, especially since I didn't have a portfolio. I did consider going to Brown so that I could cross-register at RISD, but I knew that if I was going to go to a "good" school, I wanted to go to the best. I applied early to Harvard and got lucky.

Years later, maybe during my senior year of college, I went to my House office and asked to see my file. I looked at my application. There wasn't much in the way of notes but I noticed that there were circles around where I had written "fashion designer" as intended career.

So, maybe fashion got me into Harvard. Fashion definitely found me there.