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There will be a lot of talk in your lives about excellence. You are excellent. There will be a lot of people who say things about you like ‘He thinks he’s special.’ Let me be clear to you right now: you are special. There will be professors here who will treat you with open contempt. These people do not want you here and they will not pretend otherwise. There will be other students that do the same. There’s also an aspect of this education that many of the other students here are getting outside of the classroom, in their homes, in their fraternities and clubs and teams that you will not be
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The truth could be a terrific anchor for fantasy,
The issue with that, though, was that Asher was negligent on a good day and foolish on a bad one, the circumstances created when a kid was given a map and told to follow directions without ever thinking for himself.
There is no use in trying to convince people who are determined to find fault with you over something you cannot control, and this goes both ways. You can’t live for other people. Sometimes you have to choose the me over the we. There will be Black people who will want you to be a certain way. There will be white people who will want you to be a certain way. None of that matters. The only thing that matters and is useful is how you are able to process information that you have learned and how you are able to move forward in life.
Was there any good version of rich? Exploitation was exploitation, and if there was something criminal about the way that he made his money, weren’t the Carters just as culpable?
“That’s your problem,” Ernest said. “You think everything is about money. It’s not.” “But it is,” Asher said. “Of course it is. Money doesn’t really matter when you have a lot of it, but it matters a great deal when you don’t have any. We can change your life in this room, so just let us, and then we’ll be done with it.”
