A Very Very Different World Podcast

Remember your first 10 days of college? Everybody was outside, making friends, finding parties, and living their best college lives. But what happens when your college experience doesn't start quite like everyone else's?

In the first episode of A Very, Very Different World, host DJ C. DeVone takes us back to her first 10 days at Howard University, when going away to college didn't necessarily mean going out.

Inspired by A Different World, we're revisiting the expectations versus the reality of HBCU life, finding your people, navigating independence, and discovering that everyone's college journey looks a little different.

Looking back through grown eyes, C. DeVone reflects on those early decisions and asks whether she'd approach things differently today.

Because sometimes the moments you missed are just as memorable as the ones you experienced.

Welcome to A Very, Very Different World. Class is officially in session!

What if you could go back to college knowing everything you know now?

Not necessarily to change anything.

Just to see it again.

The person you thought you were going to marry.

The song that still takes you back to one VERY specific night.

The outfit you absolutely should have left in 2002. 😂

The first heartbreak. The first big dream. The nights you stayed up talking until the sun came up.

The people who knew you before the career, the kids, the marriage, the divorce, the bills, the titles, before life started to LIFE.

Who were you when the whole world was still in front of you?

A Very, Very Different World goes back there.

Inspired by the new and old. A Different World, HBCU culture, and the college experiences that shaped us, the show revisits the friendships, relationships, music, mistakes, dreams and moments we thought we understood back then — with everything we know now.

Would you choose the same major?

Date the same person?

Keep the same friends?

Chase the same dream?

And what would you tell the 20-year-old version of yourself if you could sit them down today?

C. DeVone is a Howard University alum, DJ, producer, event curator and storyteller whose career has taken her from college radio and campus parties to DJ booths, stages and events around the world.

But before the career, the credits and the grown-up responsibilities, she was a Howard student trying to figure out who she was going to become.

Music is how she remembers her life, and probably how you remember yours, too.

So this time, she’s going back through the music, the culture, the relationships and the stories to revisit not only what happened, but what it all means now.

Because maybe growing up isn’t just about becoming someone new.

Maybe sometimes you have to go back and remember who you were.

Pull out the old pictures.

Call your college roommate.

Turn on that song.

Come back to campus with me.

We can’t actually go back.

But we can backtrack.

A Very, Very Different World with DJ C. DeVone

Same memories. Grown perspective. A very, very different world.