She wanted me to do it for the (Presidential) scholarship. (The second try) was kind of to appease her.

It's one of those films that kind of defies the 10-second blurb,

I always thought to myself, 'Why should I appease you, Mr. So-and-So? Why shouldn't I just be who I am and do what I do? It doesn't really matter what I look like as long as the music is good,

Sometimes they don't know what they don't know. You put yourself in a position to appease a group that doesn't know what they don't know.

We're greedy and we don't like to finish second.

...the ongoing suspicion that scientific discoveries or rigorous biblical scholarship will undermine faith is a tacit admission that faith is threatened by knowledge, because it is ultimately constructed on weak or faulty assumptions and, like the proverbial house of cards, needs to be "protected" from collapsing. (p. 21)