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How I Got a $40,000 Scholarship
84 Plays2 years ago
Did you know I dropped out of high school? Or that I ended up being a presidential scholar? The two don't seem to correlate unless you have a ridiculous tale to connect the dots. There's always hope for the worst students. Listen up to hear the full story.
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Find Alex:
Website: https://www.hoopercomedy.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hooperhairpuff/?hl=en
https://twitter.com/hooperhairpuff
https://www.facebook.com/alex.hooper.334/
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Transcript
Rebellious Beginnings
00:00:01
Speaker
Happy Monday or whatever day it is that you're listening to this.
00:00:05
Speaker
It's another episode of Dirty Brief and I'm going to tell you guys a little confession.
00:00:12
Speaker
Are you a priest?
00:00:13
Speaker
Are you sitting in the back of a church with a screen behind you?
00:00:17
Speaker
Because I am ready to confess all of my sins.
00:00:21
Speaker
Although...
00:00:23
Speaker
This one's not really a sin.
00:00:25
Speaker
I am a high school dropout.
00:00:27
Speaker
I know.
00:00:28
Speaker
You guys are like, what?
00:00:29
Speaker
But Alex, you are the epitome of academic scholarship.
00:00:33
Speaker
And I'm like, I know.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hold back.
00:00:36
Speaker
Because it won't surprise you to know that I dropped out of high school and I was expelled from college.
00:00:41
Speaker
My rebellious attitude just can't follow the rules of a school.
00:00:47
Speaker
But it's not my fault.
00:00:50
Speaker
It's not.
00:00:52
Speaker
I was set up to fail in school from an early
Gifted Label Complacency
00:00:56
Speaker
age.
00:00:56
Speaker
You see, when I was only in fourth grade, I was put into classes called gifted and talented.
00:01:06
Speaker
There was standard, there was honors, and there was gifted and talented.
00:01:12
Speaker
Now, I'll be honest, even at an elementary school age, I thought this was pretty cruel.
00:01:17
Speaker
Telling kids immediately that they're standard is
00:01:21
Speaker
That they're never going to be anything more than the average?
00:01:25
Speaker
Just a regular Joe Schmo or Jane Schmain?
00:01:29
Speaker
No.
00:01:30
Speaker
I don't like that at all.
00:01:31
Speaker
Nobody is standard.
00:01:33
Speaker
We're all unique flowers just doing our best to blossom in a beautiful world.
00:01:38
Speaker
But...
00:01:39
Speaker
They told me early on that I was gifted and talented.
Magnet School Rejection
00:01:44
Speaker
And they told me that I was already reading at a 12th grade reading level when I was only in fifth grade.
00:01:50
Speaker
And when they told me I was gifted and talented, I took that as my excuse to never try again in school ever again.
00:02:01
Speaker
Why should I?
00:02:02
Speaker
I'm gifted and talented.
00:02:03
Speaker
I don't need to do your baseless activities of things that I don't care about.
00:02:09
Speaker
It set me up to fail.
00:02:12
Speaker
And by the time I got to my senior year in college or in high school, now listen,
00:02:18
Speaker
I didn't even go to a regular high school.
00:02:19
Speaker
I went to a magnet school focusing on acting.
00:02:23
Speaker
So I already was doing less the amount of work than a normal student.
00:02:28
Speaker
I was getting to do acting classes every single day that I went.
00:02:31
Speaker
And yet still, even then, I could not adhere to the social norms of doing my homework.
00:02:40
Speaker
I hated doing all this stuff.
00:02:42
Speaker
So I get the senior year and I say, that's it.
00:02:45
Speaker
I'm not going anymore.
00:02:47
Speaker
I was three days in.
00:02:49
Speaker
My parents couldn't physically force me to go.
00:02:53
Speaker
So I just slept for two weeks and didn't go to school.
00:02:58
Speaker
I refused to go.
00:02:59
Speaker
They weren't sure what to do.
00:03:01
Speaker
They weren't going to physically beat me because back then, even back then, I mean, they're not the type anyway, but I wasn't the type to take it.
Schooling via Phone Due to Rebellion
00:03:12
Speaker
Again, my rebellious spirit was taken over inside of me.
00:03:17
Speaker
But what they did is they got me a medical excuse saying that I was having a lot of depression issues, a lot of rage issues.
00:03:29
Speaker
And so they set me up in this program called the Home and Hospital Program.
00:03:34
Speaker
Now, I didn't even know this existed.
00:03:37
Speaker
In fact, most of you probably don't know this exists because why would you?
00:03:41
Speaker
You probably were just going to school like a standard individual, but not me.
00:03:47
Speaker
I wasn't putting up with that.
00:03:48
Speaker
The home and hospital program is what they did for kids who were either expelled because of violent behavior or they had a medical condition that meant they couldn't go to school or a lot of them
00:04:03
Speaker
were pregnant teenagers who couldn't go to school because they were pregnant or had already had a baby.
00:04:08
Speaker
So they were continuing their education, but from their home.
Chaos in Phone Classes
00:04:12
Speaker
And the way this would work is they brought us a phone to our home.
00:04:16
Speaker
You would dial into a classroom and there would be one teacher on sitting in a booth somewhere, undisclosed location, secret shit.
00:04:27
Speaker
And then we would all call in and have a group conference call to the classroom.
00:04:32
Speaker
And it was the same like education as going to regular school.
00:04:39
Speaker
Like I didn't get a special degree or something like that.
00:04:41
Speaker
My degree is still a high school diploma.
00:04:44
Speaker
And what's crazy is those classes, first of all, I only had to go for three hours, three hours every two days or something like that.
00:04:56
Speaker
It was nothing, nothing.
00:04:58
Speaker
I had to take English and I had to take math and they were the most basic classes you could ever take.
00:05:03
Speaker
I mean, we were reading Shakespeare over the phone performing.
00:05:08
Speaker
And of course I'm performing.
00:05:10
Speaker
Why wouldn't I be performing Shakespeare over the phone?
00:05:14
Speaker
But the rest of the kids in my class, there was one kid who hit another kid in the head with a board, which is why he was at home.
00:05:19
Speaker
There was a lot of pregnant moms or teenage moms.
00:05:24
Speaker
So many of them.
00:05:25
Speaker
It's like oftentimes you would hear babies crying in the background.
00:05:29
Speaker
And here's how this class would work.
00:05:31
Speaker
The teacher, she had a computer screen and she had all of our phone numbers on a screen.
00:05:38
Speaker
And anytime one of us was speaking, there would be a little Pac-Man head that would say that would be go next to our
Minimal School Attendance Arrangement
00:05:44
Speaker
phone number.
00:05:44
Speaker
So she would say, okay, right now, Alex is the one who's speaking.
00:05:48
Speaker
But sometimes this woman would make the mistake of telling us that their screen was broken.
00:05:57
Speaker
So please identify yourself before you begin to speak.
00:06:02
Speaker
What did this cause?
00:06:04
Speaker
Bedlam.
00:06:05
Speaker
Chaos.
00:06:06
Speaker
Anarchy.
00:06:07
Speaker
None of us already want to be in school.
00:06:11
Speaker
So, of course, we just start making all these weird sounds so she doesn't know where they're coming from.
00:06:15
Speaker
We're like, oh!
00:06:19
Speaker
and she'd be like, who's doing that?
00:06:21
Speaker
Stop doing it.
00:06:23
Speaker
And we would make her cut class.
00:06:26
Speaker
She'd be like, that's it.
00:06:27
Speaker
We're not having class today.
00:06:28
Speaker
Obviously you guys are not mature enough to handle this.
00:06:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:34
Speaker
No shit.
00:06:35
Speaker
That's the point.
00:06:36
Speaker
That's why so many of us are in here because we can't exist in a normal school.
00:06:41
Speaker
So you tell us that there is a loophole to getting around class for the day.
00:06:45
Speaker
We're going to take it.
00:06:47
Speaker
This woman literally had to kick teenage moms out of class some days because their babies wouldn't stop crying.
00:06:54
Speaker
And you would hear the girl in the background like, shut up, please, please.
00:06:58
Speaker
I'm trying to learn.
00:07:02
Speaker
Pretty hilarious, if you ask me.
00:07:05
Speaker
Pretty hilarious.
00:07:06
Speaker
I went to school like that for three and a half months until the winter semester was about to begin, the second half of my senior year.
00:07:15
Speaker
At which point, the superintendent of Baltimore County School Board said, Alex has to go back to regular school.
00:07:21
Speaker
Otherwise, he'll have to get a GED.
00:07:24
Speaker
But I refused to do that.
00:07:26
Speaker
So my mom, being a lawyer, she talked down the superintendent to going to school full time.
00:07:34
Speaker
I would only go every other day for two classes, English and acting.
00:07:38
Speaker
That's all I had to do to graduate.
00:07:41
Speaker
And so I did it.
00:07:43
Speaker
I went.
00:07:44
Speaker
And I don't remember much of that time period of my life because I was smoking a lot of pot and I was just doing everything I could to just be a curmudgeon-y asshole teenager.
Community College and Work
00:07:56
Speaker
But you'll be surprised to learn, as I was surprised to learn, that somehow after taking a year off, I went to community college and took very base level classes like Health 101 and History 101, Theater 101, the easiest possible way that I could just take some classes so I wouldn't get kicked out of my parents' house.
00:08:23
Speaker
I was serving tables at Ruby Tuesday in the meantime, still smoking a lot of weed.
00:08:28
Speaker
And that's what I was doing.
00:08:30
Speaker
I was smoking weed and I was going to class sometimes.
00:08:33
Speaker
So then it gets to a point where all my friends are at college.
00:08:36
Speaker
I'm home alone.
00:08:37
Speaker
I've made some new friends with the servers and things like that.
00:08:40
Speaker
But I want to go to college.
00:08:41
Speaker
I want to get out of Baltimore.
00:08:43
Speaker
So I applied to a school in Pittsburgh where a few of my friends are already going.
00:08:48
Speaker
Point Park University.
00:08:50
Speaker
Somehow in my transcript, I graduated high school with like a 3.2 GPA.
Securing a Scholarship Unconventionally
00:09:00
Speaker
And I don't know how I did that, but I got nominated for a scholarship called the presidential scholarship.
00:09:08
Speaker
And it was comprised of your academics, 3.2 GPA, your leadership skills, of which I had zero, and your community service, of which I had not even done the necessary 75 hours that I had to do from middle school to high school to complete a regular graduation.
00:09:29
Speaker
Somehow they just gave it to me.
00:09:31
Speaker
I don't know what I did.
00:09:32
Speaker
I have no idea.
00:09:33
Speaker
I think I slipped through the cracks somehow.
00:09:36
Speaker
So I get nominated for the scholarship.
00:09:38
Speaker
250 kids get nominated.
00:09:39
Speaker
50 are going to get it.
00:09:39
Speaker
And this is a $40,000 scholarship, $10,000 per year to go to school.
00:09:42
Speaker
This is huge.
00:09:43
Speaker
And I knew I could get the scholarship.
00:09:52
Speaker
I knew I could go in because I've always been able to talk my way into and out of situations.
00:09:59
Speaker
Even when I was at my worst, my mouth was constantly doing the work of someone that was much more intelligent than I was.
00:10:08
Speaker
So,
00:10:10
Speaker
I go to Pittsburgh to go do this interview.
00:10:13
Speaker
And I'm looking at the other students that are around me.
00:10:16
Speaker
And these are like, you know, pure, like kids that look like they really cared about academics.
00:10:23
Speaker
Kids that were a type A that really wanted to excel in school and impress their parents and their teachers.
00:10:30
Speaker
Not me.
00:10:31
Speaker
I went in and saw that the guy had a Baltimore Orioles hat on his desk.
00:10:35
Speaker
And I was like, oh, Orioles, huh?
00:10:37
Speaker
And he goes, yeah, you a fan.
00:10:38
Speaker
I was like, I'm from Baltimore.
00:10:39
Speaker
Of course I am.
00:10:42
Speaker
But then he just goes, wow, you think they're going to be good this year?
00:10:45
Speaker
And I was like, you know, you never know with the Orioles.
00:10:48
Speaker
And he goes, ain't that the truth?
00:10:50
Speaker
And he said, so tell me something about you that I wouldn't know by looking at your transcript.
00:10:59
Speaker
So I said, okay.
00:11:01
Speaker
I dropped out of high school.
00:11:03
Speaker
And he goes, really?
00:11:05
Speaker
That's not in here.
00:11:06
Speaker
And I was like, I know.
00:11:08
Speaker
I dropped out of high school.
00:11:10
Speaker
And he looked at me, he was, you know what?
00:11:12
Speaker
That's exactly what this school needs.
00:11:16
Speaker
We need students who know when high school is not challenging them to the level that they require and they are ready to step up into a higher level of learning.
00:11:27
Speaker
I can't tell you this officially, but unofficially between us, you're going to get the scholarship.
00:11:35
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, I know.
00:11:38
Speaker
And he goes, how did you know?
00:11:40
Speaker
And I said, because I'm gifted and talented.
Transition into Comedy
00:11:48
Speaker
Later on, my rebellious ways would take me
00:11:53
Speaker
to my comedy journey.
00:11:55
Speaker
And that is where a place where I can truly use my railing against the rules to my advantage, because in comedy, there are no rules.
00:12:04
Speaker
You do it the way you want to do it.
00:12:06
Speaker
You make your own rules.
00:12:08
Speaker
You push boundaries.
00:12:09
Speaker
You break the format to do things that nobody has ever done before so that you can excel.
00:12:16
Speaker
And if
00:12:16
Speaker
There's a proper way to do something.
00:12:18
Speaker
I can't do it that way.
00:12:19
Speaker
My brain says no.
00:12:21
Speaker
Putting together IKEA furniture is a nightmare because it is a step-by-step instruction.
00:12:27
Speaker
I need to figure it out my own way.
00:12:29
Speaker
The same way that I figured out how to go to school, how to go to phone school, how to eventually lead my way into a $40,000 scholarship is the same reason why I'm successful in comedy because I don't go by the status quo.
00:12:45
Speaker
I do what I want to do.
00:12:47
Speaker
And I find a way to make it work for me.
00:12:51
Speaker
And when I think about that, I know I'm going to be okay.
00:12:55
Speaker
It's difficult because sometimes the river is running and you are trying your best to paddle upstream.
00:13:04
Speaker
But when you find that little tributary that's going your way and you carve your own path, magic.
00:13:13
Speaker
happens, especially when you're gifted and talented.
Conclusion and Holiday Wishes
00:13:20
Speaker
Thanks for being here, everybody.
00:13:22
Speaker
Go check out my website, hoopercomedy.com because some good shows are coming up.
00:13:31
Speaker
I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday, Christmas coming soon, Hanukkah, and everything else that you celebrate in this ridiculous blue green globe that we call a planet.
00:13:46
Speaker
I love you so much.
00:13:47
Speaker
I'll see you next week.