All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [200]
Filming Helen was a wonderful revelation, and I was reminded of why I love to act. My only bad experience during that snowy winter in Vancouver was not psychological but physical: An attack of acute appendicitis landed me in the hospital for emergency surgery and shut down production for two weeks. I had an otherwise extraordinary experience playing the role, using all my tools while delving deeply indeed into a performance of which I am very proud. I sacrificed a vestigial organ for that movie! I did a delightful and touching children’s comedy called Tooth Fairy after that and then told my longtime agent, Michelle Bohan, that other projects would have to wait until after my graduation.
Next I found a homey, quiet place to rent in Cambridge, a beautiful brick house with a peaked slate roof, sycamores in the front yard, and lots of evergreen shrubs and trees in a large (for a town!) fenced backyard. We shipped up some furniture and then all the pets. Shug was skunked in the backyard on the first night, and giving her a bath with my magic deskunking potion made it feel instantly like home.
I had shipped up my Mini Cooper, but when I inquired about having a car on the quirky campus streets, the secretary’s response was to hold the phone away from her mouth and cackle. So I outfitted myself with a pink Hello Kitty bicycle and began practicing riding back and forth to Harvard. I wheeled up in front of Widener Library, with its crimson flag proclaiming Veritas (“Truth”), the Harvard motto, and I had to seriously pinch myself to believe this was all true for me.
Classes started on July 22, 2009. I looked around at my 208 classmates, who represented ninety-eight countries and an encyclopedic array of backgrounds and prior achievements, from humanitarian aid workers to hedge fund founders, cabinet members, and NGO directors. When I inquired what one woman did at the World Food Program, she replied, “I run it.” We were all unabashed do-gooders, united by a desire to change the world for the better. I was just about twisted inside out, I was so excited. I was twisted inside out, too, because I was starting to grasp the basics of the academic schedule, which for midcareers included intensive course work in microeconomic and quantitative methods. I had not done math in years, much less math at Harvard. It was easily the most intimidating thing I have ever done in my life. (Sorry, Morgan Freeman, that includes that first day on set with you on Kiss the Girls. Even though you are a legend, you’re a lot less scary than quant.) There were former ministers of finance in my class, economic policy experts, and other wonks whose math was lightning fast, and I had zero shame about placing in the lowest-level section; I was right where I needed to be.
It was easy to decide to forgo socializing in the quad, and missing the volleyball games to which I had been looking forward. Instead, I set up tutoring in economics and math, the latter with Professor Graeme Bird, a Renaissance man from New Zealand who is equal parts mathematician, Greek scholar, English teacher, and jazz musician. He is so kind, so genuine, and so flawlessly patient that he could actually make me believe he liked sitting in his office with me six hours per week, eraser litter all over my scrambled papers and his desk, doing the work everyone else seemed to have mastered yesterday.
“Graeme,” I would choke, “I am making you think I am an idiot, that you cannot believe I was accepted at this school, you are bored sick, and you wish I would leave your office so you did not have to explain this yet again to me, who is clearly remedial in math.” He would just smile and talk me down. Then explain it again. (When I graduated, I awarded