The Devil Wears Prada came out in June 2006, during the end of my sophomore year in high school.
Growing up in the elitist bubble that is the New York City and the rest of the Northeast, Northwestern had never entered my sphere of consciousness. The only schools I had heard of were the Ivys and the SUNYs (State Universities of New York). I was only vaguely interested in journalism, but I had a passion for creative writing. I carried around my marble notebook like it was a security blanket.
And then I saw the story of Andy Sachs. And I never looked back.
The Devil follows Andy, played by Anne Hathaway, as she performs a job she hates for a loathsome boss. Yet she keeps her spunk and her wits about her at all times, and she comes out the heroine. She also has a really hot boyfriend which definitely doesn’t hurt.
Early on in the movie, a fact about our protagonist is revealed: Andy Sachs is a graduate of Northwestern, presumably Medill. She was editor-in-chief of the Daily, of course (NBN wasn’t around in her day). This may seem like an insignificant detail, but for me it was a surprising one. All of the movies that I can remember seeing when I was younger focused on the trinity of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Occasionally, a rebel would end up at Brown. And, as a third generation New Yorker, both of my parents had stayed in state for college. Seeing the name of a school that I had never heard of before shouldn’t have stayed with me, but it did.
More specifically, her sweatshirt kept with me. There is one scene in the movie where Andy is incredibly frustrated with her job, tugs on a sweatshirt with “Northwestern” written across the front and goes into a diatribe about why her life sucks. This may be a surprising reason for Northwestern to sound appealing: A whiny twenty-something complaining doesn’t put anything in the best light. Yet, the eloquence with which she articulated her frustration and her insistence that she knew something better was out there, that she just had to work a little bit harder for it, made her seem like a truly well-rounded person. I made the connection between those qualities and Northwestern and it stuck.
Flash-forward to about eight months later: I had my first meeting with my college counselor. As we went over what I was looking for in a school – East or West, big or small, private or public – my mind started to wander. I really couldn’t have cared less what he was talking about: I had my mind set on Berkeley, and I knew I was going to go there. But suddenly, the image of that Northwestern sweatshirt popped into my head. I figured, why the hell not, so I asked my counselor about Northwestern.
He didn’t know too much about it, but did some research for me. After a couple more meetings, I decided to visit Northwestern. I was immediately impressed: By the end of my tour, I knew that NU was towards the top of my list. In fact, I knew I liked NU so much that I ultimately applied Early Decision, and lo and behold, I’m here.
My decision to go to Northwestern was not based 100% on wanting to be Andy Sachs. In retrospect, it seems sort of funny to me now that I based such a huge decision on a movie — I had never done that before, nor since. While I love going to the movies, they don’t usually affect me for longer than an hour or two after seeing them. Devil is the lone exception.
Coming from a place where, upon hearing that I would be attending Northwestern in the fall, people would often respond “Is that the sister school to Northeastern?” or “Well, Boston is a great city,” it’s nice to know that a success story like Andy’s is attributed to a graduate of Northwestern. Maybe not everyone (like me) who saw the film understood what graduating from Northwestern with a degree in journalism means, but for those who did, it just make sense. Andy is a talented, bright writer who is going places, and graduating from NU just ups her appeal to those in the know.
The fact that a movie like Devil could introduce me to a fantastic school which I otherwise would have known nothing about seems incredible to me. Before sitting down to write about just how exactly I was affected by this movie, I never really thought about how much I paid attention to the pop culture I consume. But now, thinking about how many decisions I based on this one film, I’m really impressed by just how many things pop culture can introduce us to. So I owe my current situation, as a student in the Midwest, to a movie. Just a little bit crazy.
So, is Northwestern everything that I thought it would be based on my impression of Andy Sachs? Well, the cop-out answer is “yes and no” — but that also happens to be the truth. The classes here are more challenging than I ever thought they would be: I’m only two months in to my college career and I’m already terrified that I’m going to fail out. Yet NU also lives up to, and surpasses, my expectations of what college should be like. From watching Andy’s meltdown in Devil, it’s pretty clear in the movie that compared to job with Mrs. Priestly, college was the best time of her life. From what I’ve seen and experienced so far, I feel confident in saying that college will be the best time of my life too.
I have no plans to go into fashion journalism, I don’t want to live in New York when I graduate and I definitely don’t aspire to have a boss like Ms. Priestley.
But I’m here. And for that, I thank Andy Sachs.