Mark Wahlberg may have started out as an 18 year-old shirtless pop wonder, but in the last decade Marky Mark has earned some very serious Hollywood credit as an actor and producer (ever heard of a little show called Entourage?).
Turns out Wahlberg never graduated high school, getting into legal trouble and doing a stint in jail instead.
Now, as a grown-up man and known in Hollywood as a dedicated family man, Wahlberg has committed to making up for lost time and getting his high school diploma!
All of this was announced on David Letterman where the actor spoke about the very cool Taco Bell Graduate to Go program that provides at-risk youth with mentors and real-world experiences that will motivate them to stay in school and graduate.
About Joanna Schroeder
I think this is great, and I really wish that more established celebrities would make an effort to complete their educations.
One of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life was when I was the supervisor of an employee, in a retail setting, who was extremely competent, thoughtful, and organized: literally a model employee. After we had worked together for about 3 months, I asked her if she ever thought about going to college, given her obvious skills. She responded by saying that college was out because she never finished High School, and that getting her GED would take “too long.”
To this day I believe she could have a very different life if she simply stopped believing that getting a diploma was too hard or too onerous.
If Mark Wahlberg can demonstrate that a working professional can finish a high school diploma, then good for him. Hopefully others will take up his example.
Good for him
Maybe I’m just a jerky contrarian, but I see a bit of a mixed message here. I can see a young man struggling to finish school right now looking at Marky Mark and seeing a guy who’s extremely successful without finishing high school. Mr. Wahlberg is putting himself in the position of saying you need to have a high school diploma to be successful in life, when he didn’t. After all, he made it this far, right? Unless he’s going to tell all those kids that he’s just better than they are, or just more lucky.
Or, maybe I’m just a troll in a bad mood….