Meet Katherine Grant

The best way to prepare for all that lies ahead is to take a wide variety of courses. Study what you love. Study what arouses your curiosity. Be adventurous: learn about new sciences, foreign languages, and ancient cultures. Learning is never wasted; it is an investment in your future.

"You will be most successful following your passion. Get the best education in a subject that excites you, and you will never have to worry about making a living."

When Katherine auditioned to study drama at Julliard School nearly a decade ago, her lack of stage experience surprised the head of the school. "He couldn't figure out why I was good," she recalls, because "nothing (on my resume) would indicate that I had any knowledge of drama." But Katherine, who until then had performed only in musicals, possessed a surprising advantage: the Shakespeare classes she took as an English major. "I've been studying this in a chair in a classroom," she told her interviewer, "and I want to get up and bring these words to life."

"I had an understanding of the history of the drama, the style of the piece, the writer's life—a whole world of knowledge that other people walking into audition rooms don't have," she says.

Now a successful actress, Katherine, whose stage name is Kate Jennings Grant, has had roles on Broadway, off-Broadway, and on television programs including JAG, Law and Order, As the World Turns, and Sex and the City. Her most recent role was in an off-Broadway production of Summer of '42. She remembers that as a student she felt less secure about her options. She felt pressure to focus on something considered more "productive" in a field that did not interest her. She's glad she stuck with English and a minor in music-composition theory, both of which she says she uses every day in her professional life.

"We live in a world that (exerts) so much pressure to make money," she says. If you focus on that to the exclusion of everything else, Katherine warns, you could miss what she calls "the most amazing four years of your life." Instead, she suggests, "Try everything, and figure out what you like to do in your free time at the end of the day: What books do you open first, what homework do you do first, which class do you never miss because you're excited to be there? That's probably what you should be doing with your life."

Site Index | Contact