This edition of The Talented Performer profiles a great role model of courage, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D., and explains how she made courageous decisions when standing at important cross-roads on her way to becoming a Pulitzer Prize winning historian. After reading Kearns Goodwin’s profile from the Academy of Achievement, you can learn more lessons from her by clicking on any of the three links below.
“I got to know this crazy character when I was only 23 years old. He's still the most formidable, fascinating, frustrating, irritating individual I think I've ever known in my entire life." Doris Kearns Goodwin first met President Lyndon B. Johnson at a White House dance in 1967. At the time, she was a White House Fellow, but she had recently published an article which was sharply critical of Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War. Instead of arguing with her, the President asked her to dance. At the end of the evening, he suggested that she be assigned to work with him at the White House; after his retirement, he sought her advice and assistance in the preparation of his presidential memoirs. Her own account of his presidency, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream established her national reputation as a historian. She has since written best-selling studies of two other presidents and their families: The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys and No Ordinary Time (on the lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt) which earned her the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History. Her books, political commentary and regular appearances on the leading television news programs have made her one of the most respected authorities on the American Presidency. Throughout Kearns Goodwin’s life, she encountered many important cross-roads that require decisions based on courage and conviction. When she was asked by the Academy of Achievement about her many forks in the road, and what she considered the biggest decision she had to make in your career, she replied “I decided when my two little kids were one and two years old, to give up being a professor at Harvard. Harvard had been an identity. When you are connected to a university -- and especially one like Harvard -- you go places and you say, "I'm a Harvard professor." They know who you are. I had written my Lyndon Johnson book, but I didn't have the same confidence that I could be as good a writer as I thought I was as a teacher. So it was scary to give up that umbrella in a certain sense. “But... I knew that if I could spend the time writing and being at home with my kids, that if I could do that, it would give me more satisfaction, because I wouldn't feel torn in a million directions, as I was feeling. Luckily, it really did work out, because I don't think I would have had the chance to write the book on the Kennedys, to write the book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, if I was also trying to teach. I think I would have been doing things sort of half well all the way through. It wasn't so easy at that time.”Kearns Goodwin’s life story is a great example to all performers, such as students, artists, athletes and professionals, about how courage and conviction can help you create a life that’s focused on exploring the very edge of your talents. To learn more lessons from Kearns Goodwin that can help you develop as a talented performer, click on the three links below. You will go directly to the Academy of Achievement and its biography, filmed interview, and photo gallery about Kearns Goodwin. Start learning from her life today to further your quest to becoming a highly talented performer.