Melinda French Gates

My freshman advisor, who was also the college counselor for our all-girls school, I won't say her name, when I went in to start talking to her about colleges and where I wanted to go and what my dreams were, and she said,

oh, no, no, no, no.

Those aren't for you.

You know, when I said things like Notre Dame and Stanford or Duke, oh, no.

I mean, maybe we should consider, you know, maybe like a local community college or maybe we should think about Texas Tech.

And again, talk about that oppositional.

So I can also rise up.

Sometimes I have to have something to work against.

And I left

And I was so angry.

I was like, she sees me like that?

Who is she to see me like that?

Are you kidding?

I'm going to show her.

And I went back.

Once she said that, I went back and looked at the transcripts of the girls from our school who had preceded me, and I realized the only ones who ever got into the colleges I wanted to get into were the valedictorians.

And I was like, oh, boy, I've got to be valedictorian.

Is that right?

Mm-hmm.

And so I had to then get A's in all my classes, even the honors.