'CSI: NY' Star Challenges CCBC Essex Students

As the final speaker of CCBC Essex's Spotlight Speaker Series, CSI: NY star Hill Harper wasn't there to talk about his many television or movie roles.

He wasn't there to talk about being named one of People magazine's “Sexiest Men Alive.”

Harper was there to challenge the capacity crowd to become active architects of their own lives.

The charismatic speaker, who holds two post-graduate degrees from Harvard Law, likened each individual in the room to an architect, responsible not for completing skyscrapers but for building themselves into the best person possible.

He engaged the audience, not by standing in the middle of the stage, much to the chagrin of several impeccably dressed women who fought over the front-row center seats, but by roaming the aisles and challenging the students with questions.

As an architect must start a building with an idea that he then puts to paper in the form of a blueprint, so must a student write down their dreams, goals and plans.

“If you paid an architect to construct your dream house, you would tell him how many bedrooms and bathrooms you want," Harper said. "You ask to see the plans and he said, 'You don't need a plan; I got it in my head.' That wouldn't be good enough and you would insist on seeing the plans. Why do we insist upon more specificity from a stranger building our house than we insist upon ourselves for building our lives?”

Later Harper challenged the audience to double those dreams, making the point that their aspirations should begin high. He emphasized that students didn't need his permission to double their dreams—they should dream big from the start.

The second thing an architect does, he said, is create a foundation. The foundational elements of our lives include money, education and experiences.

He then told a story about his time at Harvard Law.

“So I'm at the Harvard gym,” said Harper, “and of course it's deserted—the library is packed but the gym is deserted. So I'm on the court by myself, hoping for someone to come in so we can play basketball. In walks this tall, skinny guy with his socks pulled up too high wearing short-shorts. I ask him if he wants to play basketball.

"'Why else would I be in the gym?' he says with a little bit of an attitude. So I introduced myself, and he introduced himself. 'Nice to meet you Hill, I'm Barack.' I came to look up to Barack Obama ... "

 Harper discussed working smarter rather than harder to achieve goals.

“If you find yourself bashing your head into a brick wall to achieve your goal,” Harper said, "you have to reevaluate and come up with a different methodology to achieve that same goal.”

Discussing his appearance on Celebrity Jeopardy!, Harper said, “I was so excited to win! They give you 25k just for playing, but if you win you get 50k. I recorded every episode of Jeopardy! to practice. Man, those questions are hard!” Harper played for his charity, Manifest Your Destiny, which raises money to send underprivileged students to college.

On the set, Harper discovered he would have to face three-time Jeopardy! champion Michael McKean and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

Harper quickly fell behind McKean, who seemed faster on the buzzer.

“So during the commercial break,” Harper said, “I told the producers that there was something wrong with my buzzer. They tested it and of course it worked. So I asked McKean how he rang in so fast. 'It's a secret,' he said. 'I'll tell you after the show.”

Harper quickly became frustrated and mentally quit, not even attempting to answer any more questions.

“If I would have had the courage to think long-term and put on a good show,” Harper said, “I would have realized that they do Celebrity Jeopardy! every year, and I could have done it every year for the next 20 years. That is $250,000. To this day I think of the names of the students I couldn't send to college based on a five-minute micro quit.”

Continuing the architecture metaphor, Harper explained that like an architect who create doors to let people into and out of their buildings, people must create "doors" to let people in and out of their lives. He called on the students to get rid of negative people, and to instead surround themselves with a “personal board of directors."

“You want people in your lives who have the same vision for your life as you do," Harper said. "No one ever did anything worthwhile on their own. Use your professor's office hours. Find a mentor.”