HOW TO LEAD
A DARK HORSE HOW A HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT CRACKED THE CODE TO SUCCESS BY LAU REN ST EELE
T
cated his now wildly successful career to is proving that while these paths odd Rose was no stranger to school suspensions by the time he are indeed irreplicable, individual success is not. got to the seventh grade at Sand Ridge Junior High School. Stink After working nearly a dozen minimum wage jobs in just a couple years bombs, at the time, were much more interesting than anything Mr. Peabody after dropping out of Layton High School (the last of them requiring him was teaching during art class. By his senior year in high school, it was evident to give enemas to people) and being on welfare with two kids relying on that very little — including stink bombs — could interest Rose anymore. him, Rose went back to school in 1995. At the age of 22, he enrolled in The Hooper, Utah, native was kicked out of Layton High School with night classes at Weber State University, wore fake glasses to appear smarta 0.9 GPA. “My principal told my parents, ‘There is literally no chance er, and did his best to play by the rules of due dates and good attendance. he can graduate,’ so my parents were like, ‘OK fine, you got to get a job But even with his back against the wall and all of his responsibilities to somewhere.’” He got a job stocking shelves at a department store for $4.25 keep his family afloat breathing down his neck, he still felt like traditional per hour. Shortly thereafter, his then-girlfriend (and now wife) found out classes were a bad fit. It wasn’t until he heard about the college honors she was pregnant. program at Weber State and the critical-thinking, debate-centric classes Most people wouldn’t be surprised if the next chapter in Rose’s story within it that he thought that this whole “going back included a stint (or two) in jail before concluding to school” thing was going to work. in a lackluster, melancholy dénouement. Instead, “It was after my first year there and I was sitting in he ended up on faculty at Harvard University. He’s a large boring lecture hall when my friend sitting next authored three books (two of them bestsellers) and to me said, ‘Let me tell you, I got into the honors profounded the Laboratory for the Science of Individgram and it’s terrible, there are just debates. You can’t uality at Harvard as well as a nonprofit think tank A GOOD DARK hide, there are no tests, you write and talk. There arcalled Populace. And he’s dedicated his life’s work HORSE STORYLINE en’t even right answers,’” Rose recalls. “And I thought, to revealing how important individuality is to sucIS IRRESISTIBLE BECAUSE IT ‘Are you kidding me, that sounds perfect.’ So I beecess and how we need to restructure societal sysSEEMS JUST AS lined to the top of the hill where the honors program tems to allow for individual opportunity instead of IRREPLICABLE building was and asked for the director.” focusing on an “average” that doesn’t exist. Turns AS IT DOES Upon seeing Rose’s unfinished high school diploma, out, we all can have a chance to find success even IMPROBABLE. in the most unlikely of situations. Rose believes we ACT score of 19 (a score of 24 is considered “good”), can all be dark horses, or someone who on paper and current average grades, the director said there shouldn’t succeed, but beats the odds and does. was no way Rose could be in the honors program. But Rose will tell you that there was no “aha!” moRose countered — by sitting in the honors building ment that turned his life around. No touching lobby all day after Marilyn Diamond, the honor’s colmade-for-television conversation with a menlege secretary, told him, “If you want this, don’t take tor or teacher. No stint at a wilderness therapy program or a boarding no for an answer.” By the end of the day, the director let him in on a proschool that “scared him straight.” There was no morning that he woke bationary trial period. up and decided to change it all for the better. Instead, his change of fate “I appreciated the idea of finally having a good fit,” Rose says. “We are “emerged from a series of at first seemingly random, yet always interreall distinct and there aren’t smart people and dumb people — we are just lated events.”It’s paying attention to these random events — and figuring stuck with the rules of a standardized system that says there are. On paper out what makes them not so random — that allows a person to find a disI should have been in remedial classes but if I would have just played along tinct pathway to success. I don’t think I would have even gotten through remedial math. Instead, I A good dark horse storyline is irresistible because it seems just as irrepgraduated as honors student of the year in 2000 and got into Harvard for licable as it does improbable: Oprah Winfrey being fired from one of her graduate school with a 3.97 GPA.” first jobs in television, Bob Dylan losing a high school talent show, Walt Upon landing at Harvard, Rose kept meeting people who had the most Disney being fired from The Kansas City Star for lacking “imagination” unbelievable backgrounds — “and that encouraged my path,” he says. and having “no good ideas” — the list goes on. And what Rose has dediAfter graduating from Harvard with both a master’s degree and a Ph.D.,
24 DESERET MAGAZINE
ILLU STR ATI ON BY BR I AN CR ONI N
