We were having an informal session discussing where we’d like to take our careers from here on, and the instructor, who is in her early fifties, stopped us and told us to look around us.

“Just look around you— there are future Pulitzer, Academy, and Emmy award-winners right here among you,” she said. “Some of you will be really successful, and some of you, well, some of you won’t.”

“You hope,” she continued, “that you’ll be very successful in what you do, but what if you’re not? What if you are, like most journalists will turn out to be, simply mediocre?”

It’s not the most comforting thought. Perishing in mediocrity for the rest of your life after fighting several battles, including poverty, unsupportive family and peers, short-sighted editors, and backstabbing colleagues. Not to mention the troubles, sometimes dangers, you’ll put yourself through to get certain stories. Or how readers will rip them apart without any consideration to the lengths you went to in order to get them.

But that is reality. Some of us will be huge successes. Some of us will be huge failures. Most of us will fall somewhere in between.

The instructor told us her story from no-name to fame to no-name again. She said at the height of her career, right out of school, she had been “an arrogant bitch.” She said she’d achieved success almost immediately and couldn’t imagine going anywhere but up.

Her success lasted for almost half a decade, and it was during this time that she ran across someone from her school. This was someone she’d graduated with, but had surpassed in every way professionally, so she did something she now regrets: she blew him off. She considered him beneath her and insulted him. He asked for help, and she laughed in his face.

The rest is fairly predictable. He slowly climbed his way up to career success, hers was short-lived, and soon enough, it would turn out that she was applying for a job, and he was the interviewer. She wrote him a note, knowing she would never get a response. She was right. He didn’t acknowledge her. She did not get that job, or even an interview.

“I wouldn’t have given me the job either,” she said.

She struggled for a long, long time after that.

The instructor is a star here at Berkeley and she is one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met. Indeed, students adore her and hang on to her every word. No matter who she was twenty years ago, today she’s someone who clearly loves to help others succeed. And she shared her story as a warning.

Aim for that Pulitzer, she said. Win it. Just make sure there are enough people who love you who will truly be happy when you do.