Bill Cosby will perform at First Yell, which will be at 8 p.m. Friday in Reed Arena.

Under pressure

By: Melissa Appel

Posted: 8/27/08

This year's First Yell may boast the third appearance at Texas A&M for the legendary Bill Cosby; however, don't let that fact lull you into the false pretense that his performance will be a customary or mundane event.

After all, the phone conversation I experienced with Cosby was anything but your typical interview.

Cosby was uninterested in answering the questions reporters usually bring to the table. Instead, he jumped right into educational advice for all college students.

Throughout his comic career, William H. Cosby Jr. has had considerable interest and concentration in the field of education. He received a bachelor's degree from Temple University in Philadelphia,PA. Later, he earned his master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Massachusetts.

His doctorate dissertation stressed a combination of comedy and education, "An Integration of the Visual Media via 'Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids' Into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning'' understands the work and pressure that accompany an education.

"Pressure. People talk about pressure like it's going to be 30 lashes on your back with your cat of nine tails with your shirt ripped open at the back and the salt air. Pressure" Cosby said.

"At Temple University, the person who founded Temple University called it 'Acres of Diamonds.' Now, when you think about a diamond, you very simply ask yourself, 'What makes the quality of a diamond, that which was a piece of coal?' And the answer is pressure."

College students certainly understand pressure. It comes from everywhere in their lives - professors, organizations, relationships and parents.

"They [your mother and father] had expectations-things they were going to give you and set up for you, things that they believed in to help you form this wonderful foundation of knowing how to protect yourself against 'evils,'" Cosby said.

"See, colleges can't control turning you into a better person," Cosby continued. "They can't do that. That's not what they're there for. They're talking about educating you. They're talking about putting a demand on you - pressure."

The pressure is a constant for anyone in college, but reaction to it and success under it is what makes us.

"The more positive pressure you put on yourself-and I mean doing the correct things, as this diamond under the correct atmosphere and environment under the earth, the pressure - the more you respond to it and do it, the better grade: A, B, C, D, E or F," he said. "And that's the beauty of being in college, is the time management during the pressure.

"You are able to look at the valedictorian, you're able to look at and be around people who are studying and people, young people, who really care and go through pains going back to a professor and saying, 'Look, I earned a higher grade. What did I do wrong?'" Cosby said. "And then you're in a society there - some people saying, 'Hey man, I got a C. I don't have to take this again.' "

The latter group may also boast students who have been the subject of one of Cosby's jokes. "What's the most difficult thing you've had to face in your four years of college? Somehow telling my parents that I'm going to graduate in five."

So the obvious question arises: in which category are you? Cosby phrased it this way, and said to think about and ask. "Aside from the dorm room, and my wardrobe, and the football game, and measuring up to others in terms of quality of hair, weight - what is college for?" he asked. "You go to college to what?"

And, just like any good reporter or lawyer, Cosby never asks a question he doesn't know the answer.

"Well, what is college there for?" Cosby asked again. "People didn't create a college so that teenagers could have a place to get away from their parents.

"In 1876, they did not say, 'We need a school so that the teenagers could get away from these parents.' 'They want to drink and come some place drunk and not have to sober up right away.' They want to be around and have nobody say, 'Well, are you going to study or what?' And so, college is this wonderful place where parents will come to graduation and be thankful that their low-achieving child made it. That's all they think - 'made it.'"

But all Aggies should be thankful they attend a college that doesn't let them just drift into the crowd. I know from personal experience - due to my second assignment from Cosby - that the A&M staff and faculty are there for students and actually care. During the course of our conversation, Cosby sent me on a mission to discover the male-to-female ratio of the Aggie student population and the size of the May 2008 graduating class - two questions I figured I could find out for myself quickly. However, after 11 minutes of putting Cosby on hold, I had talked to three different people and had no concrete information - they all had to check with a supervisor, although they promised to call back with answers.

When I reported this back to Cosby, he seemed to understand.

"This is called, 'Welcome to college life.' You've got all these, 'If you know your first name, push 2.' 'If you know who you're calling, push 9.' 'If you know how to spell.' Now you're going crazy. Then they give you all these multiple math things to do."

Cosby was, however, impressed by the fact that I never faced one of those menacing recordings. "This is the university, ladies and gentlemen, where, no matter what hour you call, you can get a live person," he said. "They didn't know much, but they were nice people."

And that was where our conversation ended - more abruptly than I would have liked, but nonetheless a fulfilling amount of information. Cosby was even nice enough to pen a closer for my article. As he told me to say, "Well, Bill Cosby is coming on Friday, Aug. 29 at 8 p.m., and all I know is, he better be funnier than the people I talked to this morning to get this information."

Incidentally, in case you were as curious as Cosby, last semester there were 18,254 male and 16,770 female undergraduates (roughly a 52:48 male to female ratio), and 4,378 undergraduates graduated in May commencement ceremonies.