It’s ironic that Reese Witherspoon, who barely completed one year of college, is best known for portraying Elle Woods, a woman who storms the halls of Harvard Law School with a pink laptop and an iron will. Hollywood, as it usually does, got in the way after she enrolled and showed up.
Nashville, Tennessee, where Witherspoon was raised, is a city that moves slowly but produces people who are eager to get somewhere. By most accounts, she was the type of student who took everything seriously at Harpeth Hall, an all-girls school from which she graduated in 1994. She characterized herself as a “big dork” who enjoyed reading, the kind of adolescent who gets giddy in bookstores. People who knew her were therefore not surprised when she decided to major in English literature at Stanford University. It appeared to be the logical next chapter.
It wasn’t a sudden lack of interest in literature that made a difference. It was the arrival of two film offers that came at the same time: parts in the 1996 films Freeway with Kiefer Sutherland and Fear with Mark Wahlberg. Both movies were important even though neither was a clear commercial success. They made her known. In particular, Freeway attracted the kind of attention that alters course, with reviewers praising her performance as brilliant and completely convincing. It must have been like watching a train depart without you to be on a Palo Alto college campus when that kind of momentum was developing.
It’s important to note that she had actually put off going to college for a year before enrolling, attempting to strike a balance between her early career and her gut feeling that a formal education might still be worthwhile. By itself, that deferral implies that the decision is being considered rather than dismissed. She was living in a typical freshman dorm when she eventually made it to Stanford, attempting to be a student while likely realizing that her path was already slightly different from that of those around her. Before deciding to leave and pursue acting full-time, she worked there for a year.
It’s difficult to ignore the consequences of that choice. She was starring in Legally Blonde by 2001, and by 2006, an Academy Award for Walk the Line was on a shelf somewhere, probably next to the bookstore receipts she still talks about. The woman who once declared that she wanted to purchase everything in a bookstore went on to found her own book club, Reese’s Book Club, which has grown into a true cultural force by endorsing books that frequently become bestsellers and, occasionally, television and film adaptations made by her own business, Hello Sunshine.
She reportedly visited her former dorm room when she returned to Stanford as a guest speaker in 2017. It must have been a subtly strange experience to stand in the location where a different version of her life had nearly begun. There was a student residing there. Even though the visit was brief, the details seem like the kind of thing that causes one to reflect.
Somewhere in there is a more general discussion about success and education, as well as the peculiarly American inclination to compare the two. Witherspoon never received her degree from Stanford. In addition, since making her screen debut at the age of fifteen, she has developed a company, a production empire, a book club, and a career spanning over thirty years. Since Reese’s Book Club is essentially a one-woman seminar on narrative, it’s possible that the English literature she never formally finished influenced her more than she admits. It’s still unclear if she ever considers finishing. Observing the life she has created, it doesn’t appear to be something that keeps her awake at night.
