“It’s unbelievable,” said the Flint Center usher as he swept back the curtains, revealing the staircase to the auditorium’s backstage. “You’re in.”

And with that, the three Upper School journalists Shannon Su (12), Sabrina Sidhu (12), and this reporter clambered up the stairs with their adviser Ellen Austin.

Waiting backstage was CNN and 60 Minutes anchor and journalist Anderson Cooper, who agreed to meet the staff members after his address for Foothill College’s Celebrity Forum Speaker Series from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m on Friday.

“We heard from someone whose life has been spent going around the world covering not stories, but people,” said Austin. “I hope they learned that getting to that human element, that through people, there’s the potential to change the world for the better.”

Cooper’s speech covered his journey to his successful career as a Peabody-winning journalist, as well as his salient memories of war and disaster reporting.

“I had this extremely privileged upbringing, but we were treated with respect,” Cooper said about growing up in a wealthy Vanderbilt household. “We were never at the kids’ table. We sat at the table with Truman Capote and Charlie Chaplin.”

Cooper’s tenacity and mastery of the “hustle” were, according to him, independent of his upbringing. He graduated high school a semester early to spend his senior spring trucking through sub-Saharan Africa.

“Sure, you can have your foot in the door, but it’s what you do with your foot in the door that makes a diffe ence,” he said in an interview after the event with The Winged Post.

He ended up working an entry-level job with ABC1, eventually forging a press pass to cover the Somali civil war with a borrowed videocamera.

“I could definitely relate to what he said about being uncertain,” Sabrina said.

As seniors, we’re often expected to have an idea about what we want to do with the rest of our lives, but it’s pretty hard to know that at the age of 17 or 18. In a sense, uncertainty is almost a gift because it pushes you to explore.”