Brad Pitt’s interview with Fresh Air host Terry Gross yesterday shed some light on why the “Moneyball” star quit j-school at the University of Missouri just two weeks and two credits shy of graduating. An excerpt:
Pitt: It just came to the time of graduation and everyone — all my friends were committing to jobs — and I just realized I was not ready for that yet. ..I packed up my car. I didn’t graduate — I had two weeks left — and I moved out to L.A.
Gross: Why didn’t you finish those two weeks? I mean, two weeks is a blink of an eye.
Pitt: …I just felt I was done; I was done with it. I knew where I wanted to go. I had a direction. I always liked those moments of epiphany when you have the next destination.
Add: Media blogger Jim Romenesko digs up a 2001 copy of the Missouri student newspaper in which a former professor says the school offered to give Pitt his degree in return for his simply editing some scenes from his films to “show the professionalism that we require.” He didn’t respond.
