This morning in class we were graced by the presence of Monalisa Brown. She played Shy on the reality television show “Flavor of Love.” She gave us a great speech on her experience with reality TV, the media, opportunities, fame, and the life after fame. She was a true motivational speaker in every sense of the word. She gave us extremely helpful advice for making it in the real world and how to be successful.

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Her experience on reality television did not sound like it did her mental state well. She said at first she was excited because out of all these women she was chosen to take New York’s place on the show. She described how she got ready for this audition in about a half hour, but she made a statement by putting on the iconic clock that Flavor Flav wears. She was not prepared, but prepared, as she said “always on her shit.” She was chosen and was happy until she realized how much she didn’t understand about reality TV; there was so much in her contract she didn’t know about; they edit footage to make one thing look like another, they didn’t tell her she would have to degrees from her character.

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She told us that after reality is what no one prepares you for. You get stuck in character and forget who you really are. The job of her character was to keep people tuned in whether they loved or hated her. The viewers that grew to hate her character would confront her in real life not knowing that she is a real person outside of the one she played on television. She had to go to counselling, got addicted to weed, had to be prayed over; she dealt with a lot.

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Through all of the bad times she went through, she still became successful. She is getting married soon. She has worked with countless celebrities; she put herself on the map and made a name for herself. She gave us a lot of great advice to put ourselves out there. We cannot keep sitting around being scared to take opportunities because we think we’ll look weird or people will judge us; we have to stop caring what we look like because we will never make it anywhere.

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We have to speak up and ask people if they need anything. In Monalisa’s words, “If you can’t be a servant, you’ll never be nothing.” We have to take charge of our own lives and not to let others stop us from moving up in the world. We have to learn to serve if we want to be served. We must take opportunities no matter what silly things we have to do and no matter if we are being paid nothing, if we don’t seize opportunities and show people we care, we will not make it in life.