Scott Barry Kaufman

I mean, I can't tell you how good it feels to go from a long period in your life where you are in

visible you are literally invisible and you know deep inside you that you're capable of more to a moment where suddenly you're now allowed to be discovered it was almost like i went through nine grades where i was forbidden for anyone even to see that i had any potential

So I didn't do too hot on the SAT.

I'm gonna just lay it to you straight there, my friend.

Huge anxiety.

I'm getting anxiety thinking about that SAT session.

Like even just thinking about it, like how many 20 or 25 years later, I'm anxiety.

I remember seeing the countdown of the clock on the screen, tick, tick, you got two minutes left to answer all these questions and my brain just freezing.

And I didn't do too hot on the SAT.

It's very astute of you to notice that, but that's exactly how I felt as well.

I was like, again, you can't escape it.

And I wrote a very, very from the heart personal essay, which I still have saved, saying our notions of human potential are really inaccurate.

We need broader notions that go beyond standardized metrics to understand the real achievement potential of humans.

And I wrote that from my heart and I got rejected from the Cognitive Science Program at Carnegie Mellon, presumably in large part to my lower SAT scores.

And I was like, you know what, let me sing Stars to them in the opera program at Carnegie Mellon.

Maybe I can get in that way.

I went to the audition, and I sang my heart out.

Everything in that moment of like frustration, anger, like I put it into that song.

And they told my parents that they thought I could be a real good opera singer, and they accepted me on a partial scholarship to Carnegie Mellon, when the other department at the university, they rejected me.

So I didn't bother to tell the music department, just so you know, I've already been rejected in another part of your school.