Emma Watson is Giving Us Deja Vu

Emma Watson, having grown into a graceful-yet-intellectual swan of a human being, went to Brown briefly from 2009 to 2011. And now she's going back! Watson is departing from acting, at least briefly, to return to academia. When she left, at least partially in pursuit post-Potter films such as Perks of Being A Wallflower and The Bling Ring, she didn't actually drop out completely — she deferred for "a semester or two." It ended up being more like two years — on and off, not every second of that time has been spent on a movie set or a press tour — but such is life when you're an in-demand movie star. Here's what she wrote at the time:

As you know, I love Brown and I love studying pretty much more than anything but recently I've had so much to juggle that being a student AND fulfilling my other commitments has become a little impossible.

I've decided to take a bit of time off to completely finish my work on Harry Potter (the last one comes out this summer) and to focus on my other professional and acting projects. I will still be working towards my degree... it’s just going to take me a semester or two longer than I thought : )

Watson does value her education, however, and now has announced plans to head back to finish her degree. Considering she and I started college during the same semester and I only graduated last May, she's really not that behind.

She mentioned something interesting about her school life in an interview with Tavi Gevinson on Rookie a while back, while the two were discussing journaling:

[Creative outlets like diaries and drawings have] given me a place where I can try to figure myself out, because those kinds of ideas feel too personal to put out into the public or even discuss with anyone else. It allows me to get things out of my head and work them out in a way that feels safe, which is really helpful. I can kind of play around with things.

That’s been a big part of what school has meant to me. I got famous very young, and [college] gave me a safe zone where I could figure things out without people projecting onto me their ideas of what they wanted me to be, or thought I should be.

The first time Watson headed to Brown she was stalked her entire first day of orientation by paparazzi trying to get a glimpse at Hermione at an Ivy League. So how about this time we let Watson leave Hermione — and even us — behind and pursue whatever life she's imagining for herself.