How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am Read Online Free PDF

your job.
    I was taking a course in semantics. At one point the teacher announced that someone from the class would be asked to get up
     in front of a large assembly and give a speech. He said we would be given plenty of notice. One day, without any warning,
     he announced that we were going to a hall filled with hundreds of students, and one of us would volunteer to give a speech.
     The class nervously went into the assembly hall. No one wanted to get up there, so I did, following my pattern of jumping
     in if no one else did.
    In front of at least five hundred people, I told a story about going on a hunting trip in Pennsylvania with my girlfriend.
     When the girl and I drifted in different directions, I went looking for her. In the distance I saw a bear dragging her lifeless
     body into the woods. I chased the bear, but never found it or my girlfriend.
    Nobody said the story had to be true, but from that time on, I would often be pointed out on campus as the kid who lost his
     girlfriend to a bear. Looking back on my six months at the University of Miami, I realize I never factored in until recently
     that my unusual ability at eighteen to tell a story in front of five hundred people was definitely a good sign.
    I had gone to the university to be a drama major so was very surprised to learn that, as an incoming freshman, I was not allowed
     to take an acting class. Somehow, I suppose because of the craziness of that concept, I was able to persuade an administrator
     to allow me into one. I’ve found common sense often will prevail.
    Fortunately the class was taught by the head of the department, Professor Howard Koch. I remember going onstage only once.
     I did a monologue from
Julius Caesar
. On the way to the class I was so nervous I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. After all, my only other time
     on a stage was in
Getting Gracie Graduated
in eighth grade.
    I couldn’t really understand
Julius Caesar
, but I was able to connect with the monologue, which I thought was about injustice. Later I realized it was a lot more complicated
     than that, but happily I didn’t know it at the time. At eighteen, I could identify with injustice, and as I began to shout
     out “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” it seemed my body stopped shaking to hear what I had to say.
    As my inspirational actor Montgomery Clift once said, “The body doesn’t know you’re acting.” After I was finished, a very
     pretty girl in the first row stared at me with a look I had never seen on a girl’s face, at least on a girl’s face looking
     at
me
. More importantly, Professor Koch said to me, “If you work hard, there’s no limit to how far you can go.”
    I didn’t know at the time that those would be the last words of real encouragement I would hear for years from someone in
     authority.
    At the Christmas break, I went home and auditioned for a scholarship at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. The monologue from
Julius Caesar
got me one. When I was in Pittsburgh during the break I suddenly realized there were no African Americans at the University
     of Miami. Racism was so taken for granted as the American way of life then. Unfortunately, I believe it still overwhelmingly
     is.
    Only recently has it occurred to me that my place so soon after my father’s passing should have been with my mother. My brother
     had married, and my mom was alone. I’m stunned and embarrassed that I never thought of that.
    I left Miami after six months and went to the Playhouse. I had no contact with my former friend, who remained in Florida and
     went into business there. Almost twenty years later, I was in Miami promoting a movie I had done, and I looked him up. We
     got together, and the evening was cordial, but that was it.
    He came to see me a few years later in a Broadway show with my name on the marquee. He came to my dressing room afterward,
     sat on a sofa, and suddenly began to sob. I had no idea why. Eventually, he said, “No one