Total Exposure
Page 26
So I dropped it and took over the summer at a local community college instead. You know, where they had real teachers. I got a B+ in calculus, bitches. And I even understood it. And that only happened because I learned that failure was instructive and made a BOLD decision to stop wasting my time in that CSU class and find another class that would help me learn. Of course, I worked my ass off for that B+ in calculus. I went to the tutoring center every day before class for like 3 hours and made that guy explain everything to me like I was a child. He didn’t care. It was his job. And he was good at it.
Teachers make all the difference. That’s something I realized that year too. Because the next semester, when I had to take statistics, I got an A without even trying because that guy, who was also graduate-student TA, knew what it meant to be a teacher.
If you want to learn something, find a good teacher.
That’s probably the most important thing I learned from my undergraduate experience as a non-traditional student.
If you want to be BOLD, find a BOLD person to emulate.
That’s why I decided to make Johnathan McClain my writing partner. He is so bold. He just puts himself out there and goes with it. One hundred percent of the time. He’s got big ideas, and he’s talented, and he knows people.
When he and I were first figuring out how this partnership would work we were talking about what we wanted out of it. He had his list and I really only had one thing on my list.
I wanted to learn something new.
Mostly that was how to work with another person and be successful because I’m a little bit antisocial.
Working well with others isn’t easy to do when you’ve been doing it alone for a while, so it’s been challenging for me. But worth it. Totally fuckin’ worth it.
Selling the idea of a Company TV show is worth the days when working with new people overwhelms me. Writing new books with another person is worth it, even though I’m still learning how to do that. Taking the steps necessary to get a PR person and an entertainment lawyer are all things I would’ve never done if Johnathan hadn’t encouraged me.
He’s a good teacher.
And I’m teaching him something new this year too. How to write and romance, for one. :) How to interact with fans. How to do all kinds of things that he hasn’t done before.
So he’s being bold too, whether he knows it or not.
I’d like to encourage you to be BOLD with us this year, you guys. Make changes. Make new decisions. Find new friends who can teach you things.
Yeah, all that’s risky, for sure. Risk comes along for the ride when you’re bold.
But even if you fail at what you set out to do, you can still take something away from it. You can still learn something new about yourself or the world around you.
You can still learn that dropping a class and trying again is always an option.
I hope you enjoyed this book. It’s probably not what you thought it was gonna be, but… really… that’s what I do best, right?
Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and if you want the next book, The Pleasure of Panic, you can find all the links to buy it here.
Julie
JA Huss
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About the Author
JA Huss never wanted to be a writer and she still dreams of that elusive career as an astronaut. She originally went to school to become an equine veterinarian but soon figured out they keep horrible hours and decided to go to grad school instead. That Ph.D wasn’t all it was cracked up to be (and she really sucked at the whole scientist thing), so she dropped out and got a M.S. in forensic toxicology just to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible.
After graduation she got a job with the state of Colorado as their one and only hog farm inspector and spent her days wandering the Eastern Plains shooting the shit with farmers.
After a few years of that, she got bored. And since she was a homeschool mom and actually does love science, she decided to write science textbooks and make online classes for other homeschool moms.
She wrote more than two hundred of those workbooks and was the number one publisher at the online homeschool store many times, but eventually she covered every science topic she could think of and ran out of shit to say.
So in 2012 she decided to write fiction instead. That year she released her first three books and started a career that would make her a New York Times bestseller and land her on the USA Today Bestseller’s List eighteen times in the next three years.
Her books have sold millions of copies all over the world, the audio version of her semi-autobiographical book, Eighteen, was nominated for an Audie award in 2016, and her audiobook Mr. Perfect was nominated for a Voice Arts Award in 2017.
She also writes book and screenplays with her friend, actor and writer, Johnathan McClain. Their first book, Sin With Me, will release on March 6, 2018. And they are currently working with MGM as producing partners to turn their adaption of her series, The Company, into a TV series.
She lives on a ranch in Central Colorado with her family, two donkeys, four dogs, three birds, and two cats.
If you’d like to learn more about JA Huss or get a look at her schedule of upcoming appearances, visit her website or www.HussMcClain.com to keep updated on her projects with Johnathan. You can also join her fan group, Shrike Bikes, on Facebook, and follow her Twitter handle, @jahuss.
SEE ALL HER BOOKS HERE