Brie Larson

Dori

My self-confidence was already shaky when I entered grad school. My girlfriend just broke up with me and now graduate school was looking scarier than expected. My first seminar was a round-table discussion on learning theory. At the first meeting I was given a topic, a partner and a week to prepare a lecture. The topic was artificial intelligence, something I knew absolutely nothing about. Neither did my partner Dori, a cute little blond just out of UC Santa Cruz. Our first study session became kind of a ‘date’. We were sitting in her living room when she goes: “I’m bored”, immediately slips out of a one-piece summer dress and puts on a bathing suit with me sitting there trying to act like nothing out of the ordinary is going on. We headed for the beach.

The following week I didn't know any more about artificial intelligence than before …and Dori elected me to be the presenter. I was terrified. I mention this to Nelson the day before and discover he’d been a cryptologist in the service (he looked like a hippie now). He proceeded to draw a flowchart showing me how a computer mimics trial-and-error learning. I replicated the flowchart on the board the next day and discovered how much smarter everyone else was than me. They launched into a forty-five minute discussion and I learned something about artificial intelligence. I still felt kinda' stupid though.

Meanwhile my dates with Dori were getting weird. When things got intimate she’d freeze, sit up straight and throw me out. I took it personally, wondering if she saw through me to my confidence deficiency. I decided to take a break. Two weeks later she calls and invites me to dinner at her parent’s house …and I spend the evening listening to a lively conversation between her and her father. I wasn't included and whenever her mother tried to say something ...Dori would go: “Mom! You’re such a moron” and tell her to shut-up. It was uncomfortable and afterwards I decided to re-commit to taking a break.

Two weeks later she calls and asks me if I’d come over and spend the night, platonic- like  …she  didn’t want to be alone. In the meantime I'd been seeing Dr. Russell, a University Psychologist, about my lost confidence. He gives me an intelligence test showing that I’m no dumber that anyone else around here. Then he asks how things are going outside school. “Kinda’ weird” I say and tell him the 'Dori story'. He laughs and goes: “I think she has father-issues.” I shudder and go: “No way ...that's not a real thing ...is it?” He tells me it’s more common than people think … he laughs again and goes: “He probably woke up one morning to find her sucking his dick.” I walked away realizing what Dr. Russell was trying to tell me ...stop making everything about me!

Then came the morning Dori’s father shows up at 5:00 am. I hear her scream: “What are you doing here?” He says he came to see his little girl. “Get out!” she shouted. She prepares coffee and asks me to walk with her to a nearby elementary school where she works. We walk in silence. I never saw Dori after that. She dropped the seminar and didn’t return my calls. Her roommate told me she'd moved out. I hope I played a small role helping her more on. I learned more in four weeks of graduate school than four years of undergraduate study …and I hadn't opened a book yet.

Dori Barnett Ed.D (2011)

Brie Larson

She took a big risk a few years ago when she announced she wouldn’t be doing anymore ‘pretty blond’ roles even though they’d worked so well for her in the past (Scott Pilgrim, United States of Tara). Instead she did ‘Short Term 12’ as a plain non-blond. I thought it was a breakout performance in an outstanding film. She continued to play plain non-blonds in films like ‘The Gambler’ and ‘Digging for Fire’. I think her performance in ‘Room’ has the depth and fortitude I saw in ‘Short Term 12’. It won her a Golden Globe. She’s nominated for an Oscar. Whether she wins or not I believe she's one of the finest actors of her generation.

Living in the Past

Change underlies nature. Rainstorms don’t last forever, they pass and leave room for a new cycle of growth to begin. Not so with man-made products. They may pass from view but they never go away. Waste products often don’t breakdown ..they become part of the landscape ..entering landfills, the food chain and water supply. What defies nature becomes toxic. The same with information. Digital records never go away. They follow us around. Without change, information becomes stagnant and obsolete. In the brain, rumination creates like whirlpools where information circles but is not allowed to escape. When this happens we become stuck and live in a time that doesn’t exist anymore.

New sensation

I grew up in the low-tech era where you got most of your dating advice from Penthouse forum or pop songs. One song went like this: “ .. if you love her .. you must take her .. somewhere where she’s never been before.” I found it most valuable. Take-out food on a picnic table at Mount Saint Mary’s in Palos Verdes offers a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean from what looks like farmland. Good dinner date. Who hasn’t seen the inside of a restaurant before? Thousand Steps in Laguna was like no other beach in Southern California. You could walk through a cave, float in Grecian-like pools carved out of stone then dive off a low cliff and take a short swim into a secluded cove. Not for the faint of heart but definitely more exciting than sunbathing. The reservoir in the Hollywood hills is a rarely seen oasis above Los Angeles. I once had a date tell me she felt high just being there. Another told me she was dreading the traffic going back. It was lost on her. One time a girl started undressing me at a rooftop dance club in Long Beach. It was our first date. A new experience beats a fancy restaurant anytime. It alters the senses and shifts your perspective, which can even put someone like me in a better light.