My senior year I was basically supporting myself, so it was like, Do you want to eat and pay the rent, or do you want to go to school? I wanted to eat and pay the rent.
I was running since I was 10. Since grade one at school people looked at me and thought, oh gosh she can really run, she's a natural.
One of the first times I came to New York was for a modeling and talent competition, IMTA, which I won. I came with a group, like a modeling school from Fresno.
I never thought I'd play soccer past high school, so to go from that team to actually being most-capped and three World Cups is pretty special.
I always sang. I wanted to be in a band with my sister, and I was, at 11. At 12, I started writing seriously, and that was my pacifier all through high school - that and painting.
I learned how to sign because when I was growing up in California in order to get into college you needed two semesters of language to get into a University of California school.
In high school I was on the basketball team, but the coach did something I didn't dig and the next day he looked up and saw me practising with the football team.
I always dream about other musicians. And they're never interested in hanging out with us. It's like being at school and the bigger boys don't want to play with you!
We need candidate schools to recruit more young African-Americans to run for office and more diverse law enforcement communities.
As a teenager I was crazy about David Bowie. He was a huge inspiration for me. I dressed a little bit crazily in school and dyed my hair every colour under the sun.
When I was a kid, a pickleball hit me in the back of the head, and I had memory problems. I was in a boarding school and the nuns gave me poems to remember to try and get the memory going again.
It wasn't until I got into seventh grade, I think, that I realized that doing plays might be a fun thing, and so I auditioned for the school play - and got in, as it turned out.
I used to spend hours at night, downstairs, in front of the only full-length mirror in the house, standing on the table working out what I would wear to school the next day.
I was born in Harlem, raised in the South Bronx, went to public school, got out of public college, went into the Army, and then I just stuck with it.
In high school I never went to the prom because I was too consumed with gymnastics. Also, with my hair in pigtails and looking about 10, I wasn't exactly date material.
Harvard produces leaders. People with Harvard degrees go on to become administrators in high-level positions in state educational departments and in public schools around the country.
I always wanted to be less tall. When I was at school I was the same height as all of my girlfriends and then suddenly I was turning 12 and almost overnight I got really tall.
When I grew up there was no web, blogging or tweeting. In fact, where I grew up there was not even television! I met a lot of my friends in school and in college, and they are still my friends today.
I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing.
When I was a senior, I got accepted into the Julliard School for Dance, but ultimately decided to move to L.A. to act, so that was a fun conversation with the parents. I truly have some of the greatest parents ever.
When I was 22, I was thrown out of graduate school and then fired from three jobs in a row at higher and higher salaries where I saved nothing.
