Drew Your Bliss

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Editor Rick Burchfield: Anderson Cooper spoke at Drew University last night:
http://patch.com/A-clRW


NEWS
CNN's Anderson Cooper to Drew Students: Follow Your Bliss

Cooper shares advice his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, gave to him.
By Heather Collura | 7:42am


Anderson Cooper speaks at Drew University on Thursday night. Credit Rick Burchfield
Anderson Cooper, the star of CNN's AC360 and a guest on 60 Minutes, told a crowd of more than 500 adults and Drew University students to "follow their bliss."

Relaying the most important piece of advise his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, ever gave him, Cooper told the college crowd to find the one thing that they are so passionate about that it doesn't feel like work.

Cooper, a 43-year-old Yale University graduate, said his problem when he graduated from college was he didn't know what he wanted to do. He majored in political science at Yale with a concentration in Communism.

"So when the Berlin Wall fell the year I graduated, I was kinda screwed," he said jokingly.

But what Cooper said he learned in his first few years of traveling, specifically in Rwanda, after graduation was the dynamic of the human spirit.

"We're all capable of anything," he said.

Cooper recounted many of his experiences covering the news the last several years, including the devastating natural disasters in New Orleans and Mississippi with Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti.

But it was through this deeply emotional stories that Cooper said he saw the strength and generosity of the human spirit and warned against being afraid of human frailty.

Cooper's visit was part of the Drew Forum, a lecture series featuring prominent world figures.