Student Athlete Quotes

If you want to know the value of one year, just ask a student who failed a course. If you want to know the value of one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby. If you want to know the value of one hour, ask the lovers waiting to meet. If you want to know the value of one minute, ask the person who just missed the bus. If you want to know the value of one second, ask the person who just escaped death in a car accident. And if you want to know the value of one-hundredth of a second, ask the athlete who won a silver medal in the Olympics.

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale." George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences. To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot . . . PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! . . . So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation. They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reasons that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass! There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

In fact, every word and action can send a message. It tells children—or students, or athletes—how to think about themselves. It can be a fixed-mindset message that says: You have permanent traits and I’m judging them. Or it can be a growth-mindset message that says: You are a developing person and I am interested in your development.

If schools celebrated student scientists the same way they celebrate student athletes, more students would be encouraged to pursue the subject. Instead, science is considered nerdy because schools help students to paint it that way.

One of the most painful parts of teaching mathematics is seeing students damaged by the cult of the genius. The genius cult tells students it’s not worth doing mathematics unless you’re the best at mathematics, because those special few are the only ones whose contributions matter. We don’t treat any other subject that way! I’ve never heard a student say, “I like Hamlet, but I don’t really belong in AP English—that kid who sits in the front row knows all the plays, and he started reading Shakespeare when he was nine!” Athletes don’t quit their sport just because one of their teammates outshines them. And yet I see promising young mathematicians quit every year, even though they love mathematics, because someone in their range of vision was “ahead” of them.

Just as the athlete has his coach, the Hindu his yogi, and the student his mentor, there are many of us who find wisdom in dogs. Because of their teachings, we are better people.

Actually, highly successful people don’t think about time much at all. Instead, they think about values, priorities, and consistent habits.

If you aren’t busy working on your own goals, you’ll be working to achieve somebody else’s goals.

Honey, I appreciate that so much, I really do, but it’s not just transferring that I’m worrying about. I’m worried about his mind-set. When he gets to UVA, he needs to be focused. He’s going there to be a student athlete. He can’t be driving down to North Carolina every weekend. It just isn’t practical. You’re both so young. Peter’s already making big life decisions based on you, and who even knows what’s going to happen with you two in the future. You’re teenagers. Life doesn’t always work out the way you think it’s going to work out. . . . I don’t know if Peter ever told you this, but Peter’s dad and I got married very young. And I’d—I’d just hate to see you two make the same mistakes we did.” She hesitates. “Lara Jean, I know my son, and he’s not going to let you go unless you let him go first.” I

College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups. Even elite athletes in team sports often spend unusual amounts of time in solitary practice.

But that's the same for everyone if we let society determine our value," Steve explained as he sat down on the piano bench. "We always lose when we evaluate ourselves according to some one else's ideas or standards. And there are as many standards as there are people. A jock measures you by your athletic ability; a student by your brains; a steady by your looks. It's a losing battle," he said, striking a sour piano chord for added emphasis. "We have to forget about what people say or think, and recognize that God's values are the only important ones.

No Student can stand the Gruel of Sports Training unless she has a Passion for Fame.

High school is complicated, and the lines of demarcation that The Breakfast Club said divided us aren’t quite so clean-cut. The athletes are also the smart kids; the theater kids are also the presidents of the student council. But there’s still those outliers. The people who are everywhere but fit nowhere.

If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault, but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you. One has to have a positive attitude and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in; if one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well. In my opinion, one should concentrate on activities in which one's physical disability will not present a serious handicap. I am afraid that Olympic Games for the disabled do not appeal to me, but it is easy for me to say that because I never liked athletics anyway. On the other hand, science is a very good area for disabled people because it goes on mainly in the mind. Of course, most kinds of experimental work are probably ruled out for most such people, but theoretical work is almost ideal. My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics. Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in. I have managed, however, only because of the large amount of help I have received from my wife, children, colleagues and students. I find that people in general are very ready to help, but you should encourage them to feel that their efforts to aid you are worthwhile by doing as well as you possibly can.

He was the All-American Boy. Handsome, polite, top student, great athlete, buddy, boyfriend, son, soon-to-be frat brother. Schooner kept everyone happy. Schooner Moore had no fucking idea who he really was.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” –Goethe

Highly successful people take immediate action on almost every item they encounter.

We’re disinclined to believe that someone who’s an attentive student or a congenial athlete could also be a serial rapist.

At least in the world we know, it takes trials to make something beautiful and useful out of the raw materials of life. The student’s struggle with truth develops his intelligence; the athlete’s struggle with his records and his opponents helps to develop his muscles and coordination; the musician’s struggle with more difficult pieces develops his playing skill; and the soul’s struggle with the trials of life helps to build character.

He's high," Kevin told Neil. "He tells me when he's sober, so I always know. How did you figure it out?" "They're twins, but they're not the same." Neil lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "One of them hates your obsession with Exy while the other couldn't care less." Kevin looked to Andrew, but Andrew only had eyes for Neil. Andrew took a second to process those words before he started laughing. "He's a comedian, too? An athlete and a comic and a student. How multitalented. What a grand addition to the Fox line. I can't wait to find out what else he can do. Perhaps we should throw a talent show and find out?

All the talk of bullying and alienation provided an easy motive. Forty-eight hours after the massacre, USA Today pulled the threads together in a stunning cover story that fused the myths of jock-hunting, bully-revenge, and the TCM. “Students are beginning to describe how a long-simmering rivalry between the sullen members of their clique [the TCM] and the school’s athletes escalated and ultimately exploded in this week’s deadly violence,” it said. It described tension the previous spring, including daily fistfights. The details were accurate, the conclusions wrong. Most of the media followed. It was accepted as fact.

Like an athlete trains, so must the student of life.

Be extremely careful following the Masses. Much of the time the "M" is silent.

Students would be assessed on effort rather than skill. You didn't have to be a natural athlete to do well in gym.

Student-Athletes, Remember Play the Game, don't let the Game Play You.

The cool thing about Bench was that he didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t very good; he just enjoyed being a part of the team. The other players didn’t mind having him around because he was a nice guy (who also never threatened to replace them), and the coaches liked him because he was an A student and never complained. Bench was BMS’s poster boy for student athletes;

College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups. Even elite athletes in team sports often spend unusual amounts of time in solitary practice. What

he’s a comedian, too? an athlete and a comic and a student. how multitalented. what a grand addition to the fox line. i can’t wait to find out what else can he do. perhaps we should throw a talent show and find out?” - andrew (about & to neil)

Many introver- ted kids grow up to have excellent so- cial skills, although they tend to join groups in their own way—waiting a while before they plunge in, or particip- ating only for short periods. That’s OK. Your child needs to acquire social skills and make friends, not turn into the most gregarious student in school. This doesn’t mean that popularity isn’t a lot of fun. You’ll probably wish it for him, just as you might wish that he have good looks, a quick wit, or athletic tal- ent. But make sure you’re not imposing your own longings, and remember that there are many paths to a satisfying life.

EVERY WEDNESDAY, I teach an introductory fiction workshop at Harvard University, and on the first day of class I pass out a bullet-pointed list of things the students should try hard to avoid. Don’t start a story with an alarm clock going off. Don’t end a story with the whole shebang having been a suicide note. Don’t use flashy dialogue tags like intoned or queried or, God forbid, ejaculated. Twelve unbearably gifted students are sitting around the table, and they appreciate having such perimeters established. With each variable the list isolates, their imaginations soar higher. They smile and nod. The mood in the room is congenial, almost festive with learning. I feel like a very effective teacher; I can practically hear my course-evaluation scores hitting the roof. Then, when the students reach the last point on the list, the mood shifts. Some of them squint at the words as if their vision has gone blurry; others ask their neighbors for clarification. The neighbor will shake her head, looking pale and dejected, as if the last point confirms that she should have opted for that aseptic-surgery class where you operate on a fetal pig. The last point is: Don’t Write What You Know. The idea panics them for two reasons. First, like all writers, the students have been encouraged, explicitly or implicitly, for as long as they can remember, to write what they know, so the prospect of abandoning that approach now is disorienting. Second, they know an awful lot. In recent workshops, my students have included Iraq War veterans, professional athletes, a minister, a circus clown, a woman with a pet miniature elephant, and gobs of certified geniuses. They are endlessly interesting people, their lives brimming with uniquely compelling experiences, and too often they believe those experiences are what equip them to be writers. Encouraging them not to write what they know sounds as wrongheaded as a football coach telling a quarterback with a bazooka of a right arm to ride the bench. For them, the advice is confusing and heartbreaking, maybe even insulting. For me, it’s the difference between fiction that matters only to those who know the author and fiction that, well, matters.

In fact, every word and action can send a message. It tells children—or students, or athletes—how to think about themselves. It can be a fixed-mindset message that says: You have permanent traits and I’m judging them. Or it can be a growth-mindset message that says: You are a developing person and I am committed to your development.

They were not altogether to blame. They were the products of Prohibition, mass production, and an education dominated by the beliefs that one goes to college to become acquainted with people who will later be useful in business, and that the greatness of a university is in ratio to the number of its students and the number of its athletic victories.

Whenever a college athletic program got itself in trouble with the law - big trouble - the NCAA usually steered clear, sticking to how many minutes a week student-athletes are allowed to stretch, the distance they can travel in a car with an alumnus, and whether they are allowed to put cream cheese or jam on their free breakfast bagel. (They are not).

What distinguishes love-driven leaders from tyrants? "Great affection" coupled with the passion to see others "run at full speed towards perfection." Love-driven leadership is not urging others forward without concern for their aspirations, well-being, or personal needs. Nor is it being the nice-guy manager who overlooks underperformance that could damage a subordinate's long-term prospects. Instead, love-driven leaders hunger to see latent potential blossom and to help it happen. In more prosaic terms, when do children, students, athletes, or employees achieve their full potential? When they're parented, taught, coached, or managed by those who engender trust, provide support and encouragement, uncover potential, and set high standards.

Before you are a champion you are an amateur. Before you are a general you are a warrior. Before you are a politician you are a constituent. Before you are a president you are a citizen. Before you are a pastor you are a parishioner. Before you are a pope you are a priest. Before you are a teacher you are a student. Before you are a guru you are a disciple. Before you are an inventor you are a scientist. Before you are a judge you are a lawyer. Before you are a maestro you are an apprentice. Before you are a coach you are an athlete. Before you are a genius you are a talent. A humble amateur is better than a proud champion. A humble warrior is better than a proud general. A humble constituent is better than a proud politician. A humble citizen is better than a proud president. A humble parishioner is better than a proud pastor. A humble priest is better than a proud pope. A humble student is better than a proud teacher. A humble disciple is better than a proud guru. A humble scientist is better than a proud inventor. A humble lawyer is better than a proud judge. A humble apprentice is better than a proud expert. A humble athlete is better than a proud coach. A humble talent is better than a proud genius.

In a common lesson about electromagnetic forces, students are given an exercise in which a bar magnet is placed on a table surrounded by scattered iron filings. The invisible field surrounding the magnet will draw the filings into alignment with it, until the swirling starburst shape of the field becomes visible. The capital relation is a kind of social magnet, with capital at one end and labor at the other, that tends to align all other social hierarchies with the master hierarchy based on money. Hence the hierarchy of athletic ability is translated into a hierarchy of payment for performing professionally. And yet the magnetism of capital is not so strong that it can perfectly align all the systems. Fame, for example, may in general be translatable into money (as when Kim Kardashian releases a smartphone game that becomes wildly successful), but the conversion is not an exact or uniform one.

If you want to understand what a year of life means, ask a student who just flunked his end-of-the-year exams. Or a month of life: speak to a mother who has just given birth to a premature baby and is waiting for him to be taken out of the incubator before she can hold him safe and sound in her arms. Or a week: interview a man who works in a factory or a mine to feed his family. Or a day: ask two people madly in love who are waiting for their next rendezvous. Or an hour: talk to a claustrophobia sufferer stuck in a broken-down elevator. Or a second: look at the expression on the face of a man who has just escaped from a car wreck. Or one-thousandth of a second: ask the athlete who just won the silver medal at the Olympic Games, and not the gold he trained for all his life. Life is magic, Arthur, and I know what I'm saying because since my accident I appreciate the value of every instant. So I beg you, let's make the most of all the seconds that we have left.

At first I found it inexplicable that boys used such violent words in reference to sex. Why would you be proud of being a lousy lover? If they were truly talking about sex in those situations, they might bring up pleasure, connection, finesse: they wouldn't weaponize it. But the whole point of "locker room banter" is that it's not actually about sex, and that, I think, is why guys were more ashamed to discuss it as openly with me as topics that were equally explicit. Those exaggerated stories are in truth about power: about asserting masculinity through control of women's bodies. And that requires- demands- a denial of girls' humanity... Dismissing that as locker room talk denies the ways that language can desensitize and abrade boys' ability to see girls as people deserving of respect and dignity. And, in fact, by the time they are in college, athletes are three times more likely than other students to be accused of sexual misconduct or intimate partner violence.

I'd compare college tuition to paying for a personal trainer at an athletic club. We professors play the roles of trainers, giving people access to the equipment (books, labs, our expertise) and after that, it is our job to be demanding. We need to make sure that our students are exerting themselves. We need to praise them when they deserve it and to tell them honestly when they have it in them to work harder. Most importantly, we need to let them know how to judge for themselves how they're coming along. The great thing about working out at a gym is that if you put in effort, you get very obvious results. The same should be true of college. A professor's job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror.

The language of true crime is coded—it tells us our degree of mourning is contingent on the victim’s story. While students and athletes are often remembered for their accolades and looks, sex workers or women who struggled with addiction are reduced to those identities as a justification for the violence committed against them—if their stories are even covered at all. The truth is: It is a privilege to have your body looked for. True crime, while being a genre that so many women rely on for contorted validation, is, simultaneously, a perpetuator of misogyny, racism, and sexualized violence—all of which is centered around one, beloved, dead girl. It is a genre primarily produced by men. A genre that complicates how we bond over our love for it, often unsure of who identifies with the victim and who identifies with the perpetrator.

It gives the whole game away that college football is so popular in the SEC, where the legacy of Jim Crow and segregation is so powerful, and now they worship Black football players who make no money and are out there providing entertainment. The university people and the networks intentionally create this fake feel—they use the football field to miseducate people with a fictional portrayal of life off the field. The fiction is that because all these white student fans are cheering majority-Black teams, the dynamic is somehow postracial. It creates an illusion for both the fan and the player—the student and the student-athlete—so they don’t have to face how messed-up this country is. You’re not Black on the field. You’re a representative of your school. There’s no New Jim Crow when you’re on the field. There’s no Donald Trump. There’s no Trayvon Martin.

Next I tested my pupils for ingenuity. I handed out random materials and instructed them to improvise potentially lifesaving objects. ‘This ancient skill is known as MacGyvering,’ I told them. Sadly, none of my inaugural group of students was a child of Hephaestus, so no one did very well with this assignment. When I hinted to Perseus that he could hammer and polish his Celestial bronze to make a mirrored shield, he rolled his eyes and scoffed, ‘What would I ever use that for?’ Likewise, most failed miserably with musical composition. Only Jason came up with something memorable: a mesmerizing stomp-stomp CLAP rhythm that so stirred the blood we adopted it as our prebattle beat. (You can still hear that stomp-stomp CLAP rhythm pounded out at athletic competitions today, along with the chant ‘We will, we will … ROCK YOU!’) It was clear that the demigods had a lot to learn.

nally, try not to worry if all signs suggest that your introverted child is not the most popular kid at school. It’s critically important for his emotional and social development that he have one or two solid friendships, child development experts tell us, but being popular isn’t necessary. Many introverted kids grow up to have excellent social skills, although they tend to join groups in their own way—waiting a while before they plunge in, or participating only for short periods. That’s OK. Your child needs to acquire social skills and make friends, not turn into the most gregarious student in school. This doesn’t mean that popularity isn’t a lot of fun. You’ll probably wish it for him, just as you might wish that he have good looks, a quick wit, or athletic talent. But make sure you’re not imposing your own longings, and remember that there are many paths to a satisfying life.

Understanding the narcissism epidemic is important because its long-term consequences are destructive to society. American culture’s focus on self-admiration has caused a flight from reality to the land of grandiose fantasy. We have phony rich people (with interest-only mortgages and piles of debt), phony beauty (with plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures), phony athletes (with performance-enhancing drugs), phony celebrities (via reality TV and YouTube), phony genius students (with grade inflation), a phony national economy (with $11 trillion of government debt), phony feelings of being special among children (with parenting and education focused on self-esteem), and phony friends (with the social networking explosion). All this fantasy might feel good, but unfortunately, reality always wins. The mortgage meltdown and the resulting financial crisis are just one demonstration of how inflated desires eventually crash to earth.

something that cannot be memorized and graded: a great doctor must have a huge heart and a distended aorta through which pumps a vast lake of compassion and human kindness. At least, that’s what you’d think. In reality, medical schools don’t give the shiniest shit about any of that. They don’t even check you’re OK with the sight of blood. Instead, they fixate on extracurricular activities. Their ideal student is captain of two sports teams, the county swimming champion, leader of the youth orchestra and editor of the school newspaper. It’s basically a Miss Congeniality contest without the sash. Look at the Wikipedia entry for any famous doctor, and you’ll see: ‘He proved himself an accomplished rugby player in youth leagues. He excelled as a distance runner and in his final year at school was vice-captain of the athletics team.’ This particular description is of a certain Dr H. Shipman, so perhaps it’s not a rock-solid system.

Any class, no matter how able, will always have a bottom quarter. What are the effects of the psychology of feeling average, even in a very able group? Are there identifiable types with the psychological or what-not tolerance to be 'happy' or to make the most of education while in the bottom quarter?" He knew exactly how demoralizing the Big Pond was to everyone but the best. To Glimp's mind, his job was to find students who were tough enough and had enough achievements outside the classroom to be able to survive the stress of being Very Small Fish in Harvard's Very Large Pond. Thus did Harvard begin the practice (which continues to this day) of letting in substantial numbers of gifted athletes who have academic qualifications well below the rest of their classmates. If someone is going to be cannot fodder in the classroom, the theory goes, it's probably best if that person has an alternative avenue of fulfillment on the football field.

OK, if you are like most people, your list of the most valuable things includes your spouse, children, friends, health, money, and of course, time. Highly successful people have a similar list—but they rank time as the most important item of all. Shouldn’t health be number one? You can be healthy, and then get sick, and then regain your health. How about money? You can lose all your money, and then you can make it all back. Friends? Friends are important, and yet, how many friends did you have back in college that you no longer keep in touch with? Or even people who were guests at your wedding, and that was the last day you ever saw them? Yes, friends are prized, yet we lose them and make new ones all the time. Yes, your spouse means the world to you. And 50 percent of married people get a divorce, and many divorced people get a new husband or wife that is suddenly the love of their life. But time… You can never lose time and get it back again. You can’t spend time and go earn more of it. You can’t buy it, rent it, or borrow it. Time

You can challenge a leader without challenging his authority, challenge a priest without challenging his integrity, challenge a warrior without challenging his intensity, challenge a scholar without challenging his education, challenge a guru without challenging his counsel, challenge a professor without challenging his lectures, challenge a student without challenging his potentiality, challenge a prophet without challenging his reputation, challenge a teacher without challenging his lessons, challenge a scientist without challenging his discoveries, challenge an inventor without challenging his ingenuity, challenge a preacher without challenging his sermons, challenge a laywer without challenging his strategy, challenge an athlete without challenging his capacity, challenge an artist without challenging his mastery, challenge a general without challenging his command, challenge a ruler without challenging his influence, challenge a president without challenging his government, and challenge a king without challenging his supremacy.

but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are still reading it.

Great athletes practice, train, study, and develop. So do great learners. As students empowering ourselves with knowledge, what can we learn from Olympic-caliber athletes about success, and how to achieve it? 1. Preparation = Success! “If you fail to prepare, you're prepared to fail.” —Mark Spitz, Gold Medalist, Swimming 2. Learning is lifelong “Never put an age limit on your dreams.” —Dara Torres, Gold Medalist, Swimming 3. Failure is opportunity "One shouldn't be afraid to lose” —Oksana Baiul, Gold Medalist, Figure Skating 4. The only person who can stop you is yourself “This ability to conquer oneself is no doubt the most precious of all things sports bestows.” —Olga Korbut, Gold Medalist, Gymnastics 5. Learning is fun! “If you're not having fun, then what the hell are you doing?” —Allison Jones, six-time Paralympian 6. You have to be in it to win it “Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can't handle.” —Sanya Richards-Ross, Gold Medalist, Track & Field There are always new skills to learn, new challenges to overcome, new ways to succeed. The only guarantee of failure is if you don’t get started in the first place.

A sailor is distinguished by the number of storms he has overcome. A warrior is distinguished by the number of opponents he has conquered. A doctor is distinguished by the number of patients he has healed. A preacher is distinguished by the number of sermons he has delivered. A ruler is distinguished by the number of lives he has improved. A celebrity is distinguished by the number of hearts he has impressed. A policeman is distinguished by the number of criminals he has arrested. A teacher is distinguished by the number of students he has graduated. An athlete is distinguished by the number of competitions he has won. An author is distinguished by the number of books he has penned. An artist is distinguished by the number of portraits he has painted. An architect is distinguished by the number of buildings he has designed. A sculptor is distinguished by the number of statues he has fashioned. A musician is distinguished by the number of songs he has composed. A lawyer is distinguished by the number of cases he was won. A scientist is distinguished by the number of discoveries he has made. A priest is distinguished by the number of souls he has saved. A guru is distinguished by the number of schools he has established.

The greatest trust is confidence. The greatest charity is compassion. The greatest courage is action. The greatest patience is composure. The greatest sincerity is impartiality. The greatest kindness is affection. The greatest hope is expectation. The greatest peace is contentment. The greatest happiness is joy. The greatest faith is certainty. The greatest love is adoration. The greatest virtue is integrity. The greatest teacher is reason. The greatest student is intelligence. The greatest philosopher is understanding. The greatest scientist is reason. The greatest historian is yesturday. The greatest prophet is eternity. The greatest preacher is reality. The greatest warrior is duty. The greatest athlete is courage. The greatest wrestler is strategy. The greatest musician is passion. The greatest painter is inspiration. The greatest sculptor is history. The greatest writer is destiny. The greatest light is truth. The greatest knowledge is awareness. The greatest understanding is discernment. The greatest wisdom is caution. The greatest theory is facts. The greatest philosophy is logic. The greatest gospel is conviction. The greatest religion is compassion. The greatest prophecy is revelation. The greatest world is nature. The greatest sky is perception. The greatest galaxy is conscience. The greatest universe is imagination. The greatest God is existence.

Probably my favorite method of funding school, other than saving for it, is scholarships. There is a dispute as to how many scholarships go unclaimed every year. Certainly there are people on the Web who will hype you on this subject. However, legitimately there are hundreds of millions of dollars in scholarships given out every year. These scholarships are not academic or athletic scholarships either. They are of small- to medium-sized dollar amounts from organizations like community clubs. The Rotary Club, the Lions Club, or the Jaycees many times have $250 or $500 per year they award to some good young citizen. Some of these scholarships are based on race or sex or religion. For instance, they might be designed to help someone with Native American heritage get an education. The lists of these scholarships can be bought online, and there are even a few software programs you can purchase. Denise, a listener to my show, took my advice, bought one of the software programs, and worked the system. That particular software covered more than 300,000 available scholarships. She narrowed the database search until she had 1,000 scholarships to apply for. She spent the whole summer filling out applications and writing essays. She literally applied for 1,000 scholarships. Denise was turned down by 970, but she got 30, and those 30 scholarships paid her $38,000. She went to school for free while her next-door neighbor sat and whined that no money was available for school and eventually got a student loan.

If you are a great warrior, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest opponent. If you are a great general, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest soldier. If you are a great politician, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest constituent. If you are a great governor, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest peasant. If you are a great president, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest citizen. If you are a great leader, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest servant. If you are a great pastor, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest parishioner. If you are a great prophet, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest seer. If you are a great pope, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest priest. If you are a great teacher, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest student. If you are a great guru, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest disciple. If you are a great architect, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest mason. If you are a great engineer, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest mechanic. If you are a great inventor, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest scientist. If you are a great doctor, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest nurse. If you are a great judge, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest lawyer. If you are a great artist, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before the lowest apprentice. If you are a great coach, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest athlete. If you are a great genius, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest talent. If you are a great philanthropist, you are supposed to be prepared to humble yourself before for the lowest beggar. In the school of patience, it is the long suffering who graduate. In the school of generosity, it is the kind who graduate. In the school of activism, it is the devoted who graduate. In the school of honor, it is the noble who graduate. In the school of wisdom, it is the prudent who graduate. In the school of knowledge, it is the curious who graduate. In the school of insight, it is the observant who graduate. In the school of understanding, it is the intelligent who graduate. In the school of success, it is the excellent who graduate. In the school of eminence, it is the influential who graduate. In the school of conquest, it is the fearless who graduate. In the school of enlightenment, it is the humble who graduate. In the school of courage, it is the hopeful who graduate. In the school of fortitude, it is the determined who graduate. In the school of leadership, it is servants who graduate. In the school of talent, it is the skilled who graduate. In the school of genius, it is the brilliant who graduate. In the school of greatness, it is the persevering who graduate. In the school of transcendence, it is the fearless who graduate. In the school of innovation, it is the creative who graduate.

In the hardest moments of a long race, the athlete’s entire conscious experience of reality boils down to a desire to continue pitted against a desire to quit. Nothing else remains. The athlete is no longer a student or a teacher or a salesman. He is no longer a son or a father or a husband. He has no social roles or human connections whatsoever. He is utterly alone. He no longer has any possessions. There is no yesterday and no tomorrow, only now. The agony of extreme endurance fatigue crowds out every thought and feeling except one: the goal of reaching the finish line. The sensations within the body – burning lungs, screaming muscles, whole-body enervation – exist only as the substance of the desire to quit. What little of the external environment the athlete is aware of – the road ahead, the competitor behind, the urgings of onlookers – exists only as the substance of the desire to continue. The desire to continue versus the desire to quit – the athlete is this and this alone until he chooses one or the other. And when the choice is made he briefly becomes either persevering or quitting until, after he has stopped at the finish line or, God forbid, short of it, the stripped-away layers are piled back on and he becomes his old self again. Only not quite. He is changed, for better or worse.

Evangelical zeal also permeated into the youth culture, as seen in the explosion of youth-oriented organizations like Young Life (1941), Youth for Christ (1946), Fellowship of Christian Athletes (1954), and Student Venture (1966). In response to the immediate popularity of these organizations and the supportive desire to see young people reached with the gospel, churches began their own version of “youth ministry.” Youth ministry quickly became a church-norm, especially in the United States, even developing into its own culture with rock bands, skits, and inspirational talks by the newly-formed category—the Youth Pastor. Some today are calling for this culture of youth ministry to give up their gimmicks and return to a biblical model of means of grace ministry.

PRECIOUS” The Hebrew word for “precious” means to carry weight, to be scarce or esteemed. When something is precious, one places more value on it than on other things, making it “weighty.” When “precious” appears in other Old Testament passages, it’s surrounded by danger, notions of redemption, the human soul, and the eyes of the beholder (1 Sam. 26:21; 2 Kings 1:13–14; Ps. 49:8 KJV; 72:14). The precious soul must be saved before it’s too late. When the word precious is called upon, it’s usually because something is at stake. What is at stake? According to Søren Kierkegaard, despair.3 When humans are overwhelmed by their finitude and blemishes, they lose sense of their God-given greatness. We need to be reminded, lest we forget. After all, we were created in God’s image; isn’t that enough? Why do we weep over our appearance, struggle with acceptance, and burn with envy toward others? We were created in God’s image! There’s nothing nobler, more beautiful, or more stunning than that. Yet we treat our souls as if they were garbage. We desperately need to be reminded of the weight that our souls carry before it’s too late. I was waiting in line behind a man and his son at a café. The man was middle-aged and fairly rugged. His teenage son had Down syndrome, but his eyes were bright and he wore excitement on his face. Dad was getting him hot chocolate with whipped cream. As the two were waiting for the barista to hand them their drinks, the dad reached out his arm and placed his hand on the back of his son’s hair. He gently folded his fingers into his son’s hair and said, “Hey, beautiful.” Both puzzled and innocent, the son answered simply, “What?” Staring deeply into his son’s face, the dad said, “I love you.” This father saw the weight of his son’s preciousness. In the world’s eyes, this boy would never be a great athlete or a top student. He would never attain the world’s standard of beauty. He’d probably live at home for longer than usual, depending on the care of his parents. He was most likely demanding and had surely required more of his parents as a baby. He probably had more than a few idiosyncrasies that tested his family’s nerves. He was probably messy.4 But his dad loved him. His dad didn’t label him as a burden, but as beautiful. His dad loved him just the way he was—I could see that plainly. Our souls are sick from head to toe, yet our Father finds a way to love us anyway. Picture God raising his hand to your head and sifting your hair between his fingers. He looks into your eyes—knowing full well what you are—and says, “Hey, beautiful. I love you.” That’s enough to melt my heart in joy. There are no conditions to meet in order to earn God’s love. He is in love with you just as you are. “You carry a lot of worth in my eyes, you are heavy-laden with beauty, and I love you.

Work from your calendar, not a to-do list.

Procrastination is the habit of putting off important, less pleasurable tasks by doing easier, more pleasurable tasks. Things like email, Twitter, Facebook, food, and TV are excellent ways to procrastinate.

When people—couples, coaches and athletes, managers and workers, parents and children, teachers and students—change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth takes plenty of time, effort, and mutual support. Learn

scholarship student athletes. This includes preparing

the simple act of scheduling tasks on your calendar—instead of writing them on a to-do list—will free your mind, reduce stress, and increase cognitive performance.

The Zeigarnik effect is a psychological term based on studied that show unfinished goals cause intrusive, uncontrolled thoughts.

We always underestimate how hard it is to be our best self in the present moment.

How to Leave the Office at 5:00—Without Guilt

You can never lose time and get it back again.

You need to start paying other people to do stuff for you even before you feel you are ready.

dollar per minute” analysis,

His name is C. J. Skender, and he is a living legend. Skender teaches accounting, but to call him an accounting professor doesn’t do him justice. He’s a unique character, known for his trademark bow ties and his ability to recite the words to thousands of songs and movies on command. He may well be the only fifty-eight-year-old man with fair skin and white hair who displays a poster of the rapper 50 Cent in his office. And while he’s a genuine numbers whiz, his impact in the classroom is impossible to quantify. Skender is one of a few professors for whom Duke University and the University of North Carolina look past their rivalry to cooperate: he is in such high demand that he has permission to teach simultaneously at both schools. He has earned more than two dozen major teaching awards, including fourteen at UNC, six at Duke, and five at North Carolina State. Across his career, he has now taught close to six hundred classes and evaluated more than thirty-five thousand students. Because of the time that he invests in his students, he has developed what may be his single most impressive skill: a remarkable eye for talent. In 2004, Reggie Love enrolled in C. J. Skender’s accounting class at Duke. It was a summer course that Love needed to graduate, and while many professors would have written him off as a jock, Skender recognized Love’s potential beyond athletics. “For some reason, Duke football players have never flocked to my class,” Skender explains, “but I knew Reggie had what it took to succeed.” Skender went out of his way to engage Love in class, and his intuition was right that it would pay dividends. “I knew nothing about accounting before I took C. J.’s class,” Love says, “and the fundamental base of knowledge from that course helped guide me down the road to the White House.” In Obama’s mailroom, Love used the knowledge of inventory that he learned in Skender’s class to develop a more efficient process for organizing and digitizing a huge backlog of mail. “It was the number-one thing I implemented,” Love says, and it impressed Obama’s chief of staff, putting Love on the radar. In 2011, Love left the White House to study at Wharton. He sent a note to Skender: “I’m on the train to Philly to start the executive MBA program and one of the first classes is financial accounting—and I just wanted to say thanks for sticking with me when I was in your class.

Time Is the Most Important Asset Time is unique because it’s the one true equalizer. Some people are born rich, others born poor. Some have Ivy League degrees, while others are high school dropouts. Some are genetically gifted athletes, others physically challenged. But we all have the same minutes in a day. Time is the lowest common denominator.

It was a funny, impossible little trap of nature, motherhood. It muddled your brain with floods of hormones and sleep deprivation, kept you constantly busy tending to a million needs, had you forever thinking about the care of others. You could disappear into motherhood, forget completely that once upon a time you were an athlete, a graduate student, that you had ambitions to go into politics, change the world. That once upon a time you wanted to write. And even though motherhood wiped all that away like a cosmic eraser over the chalkboard of your life, it gave you something else—this crazy, blissful, adoring love that splits you open and redefines you from the inside out.

walking meetings, a practice that has been adopted by Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey as well. Marissa

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, which was designed to ensure privacy and properly regulated access to student records, has become “the shield behind which higher education hides the academic corruption in college athletics.

Yeah. No matter what Coach does or doesn't do. Because ... I'm going on my terms. Even if by some miracle he recommends me for the scholarship, I'm not taking it." That surprises her. "I don't get it." "That's why I had no choice but to let that pitch go by. I had to prove to myself that I could live without baseball. I can't go to college on their terms. I can't be the ballplayer first and the student second, and if they're giving me an athletic scholarship, believe me—that's what it would be. Athlete-scholar, not the other way around. No one can convince me otherwise. "So, yeah. I'll have to take out student loans. I'll have to work my ass off. But that's OK.

Despite those risks, hypersexualization is ubiquitous, so visible as to be nearly invisible: it is the water in which girls swim, the air they breathe. Whatever else they might be—athletes, artists, scientists, musicians, newscasters, politicians—they learn that they must, as a female, first and foremost project sex appeal. Consider a report released by Princeton University in 2011 exploring the drop over the previous decade in public leadership positions held by female students. Among the reasons these über-elite young women gave for avoiding such roles was that being qualified was not enough. They needed to be “smart, driven, involved in many different activities (as are men), and, in addition, they are supposed to be pretty, sexy, thin, nice, and friendly.” Or, as one alumna put it, women had to “do everything, do it well, and look ‘hot’ while doing it.

Collegiate life presents a student with innumerable opportunities to engender personal growth by responding to a dynamic social, athletic, and academic environment. Students instigate personal development by making calculated and rash personal decisions pertaining to what activities to pursue and by measuring their string of reactions to new experiences.

Great athletes practice, train, study, and develop. So do great learners. As students empowering ourselves with knowledge, what can we learn from Olympic-caliber athletes about success, and how to achieve it? 1. Preparation = Success! “If you fail to prepare, you're prepared to fail.” —Mark Spitz, Gold Medalist, Swimming 2. Learning is lifelong “Never put an age limit on your dreams.” —Dara Torres, Gold Medalist, Swimming 3. Failure is opportunity "One shouldn't be afraid to lose” —Oksana Baiul, Gold Medalist, Figure Skating 4. The only person who can stop you is yourself “This ability to conquer oneself is no doubt the most precious of all things sports bestows.” —Olga Korbut, Gold Medalist, Gymnastics 5. Learning is fun! “If you're not having fun, then what the hell are you doing?” —Allison Jones, six-time Paralympian 6. You have to be in it to win it “Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can't handle.” —Sanya Richards-Ross, Gold Medalist, Track & Field There are always new skills to learn, new challenges to overcome, new ways to succeed. The only guarantee of failure is if you don’t get started in the first place.

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students, not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.

read a cutting-edge book on mental training every three weeks.

Through Elrod’s research and own experiences, he developed a system he calls Life S.A.V.E.R.S. S is for Silence (quiet, gratitude, meditation, or prayer) A is for Affirmations (purpose, goals, priorities) V is for Visualization (of goals or ideal life) E is for Exercise R is for Reading (a self-improvement book) S is for Scribing (journaling)

Yes, you receive too much email, but you need to take responsibility for handling it.

A three-word question used to send chills of dread down my spine. “Got a minute?

The Miracle Morning is about focusing on "becoming" more so that you can start doing less, to achieve more.

unspoken message. “You’re fundamentally okay.” As the weeks and months passed, he began to feel a quiet confidence and affirmed himself. He began to blossom, at his own pace and speed. He became outstanding as measured by standard social criteria—academically, socially and athletically—at a rapid clip, far beyond the so-called natural developmental process. As the years passed, he was elected to several student body leadership positions, developed into an all-state athlete and started bringing home straight A report cards. He developed an engaging and guileless personality that has enabled him to relate in nonthreatening ways to all kinds of people. Sandra and I believe that our son’s “socially impressive” accomplishments were more a serendipitous expression of the feelings he had about himself than merely a response to social reward. This was an amazing experience for Sandra and me, and a very instructional one in dealing with our other children and in other roles as well. It brought to our awareness on a very personal level the vital difference between the Personality Ethic and the Character Ethic of success. The Psalmist expressed our conviction well: “Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.

he gave me step-by-step instructions on the right way to do the wrong things

The professionals were heroes. The physicians and nurses and medical students and student nurses who were all dying in large numbers themselves held nothing of themselves back. And there were others. Ira Thomas played catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics. The baseball season had been shortened by Crowder’s “work or fight” order, since sport was deemed unnecessary labor. Thomas’s wife was a six-foot-tall woman, large-boned, strong. They had no children. Day after day he carried the sick in his car to hospitals and she worked in an emergency hospital.

Success wasn’t determined by natural ability. Something else was happening. The work of renowned Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck offers one possible explanation. Dweck spent decades working with elementary school students, interviewing professional athletes, and studying business leaders to discover why some people managed to fulfill their potential while others failed. Her landmark conclusion was that it all came down to individual mindset. Most people have either a growth mindset or a fixed mindset, Dweck suggested. People with fixed mindsets believe that their skills and abilities are set. They see themselves as being either good or bad at something and tend to focus their efforts on tasks and careers where they feel they have a natural ability. People with growth mindsets believe that success is the result of learning, hard work, and determination. They think that they can achieve their true potential through effort. As a result, they thrive on challenges and often have a passion for learning. They are also more likely to treat failure as “a parking ticket, not a car wreck.” They’re more resilient, have more self-confidence, and tend to be happier.

Student First, Athlete Second

As Moore put it, “The Bible says, where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is also.” She maintained that the school district budgeted more for medical supplies like athletic tape for athletic programs at Permian than it did for teaching materials for the English department, which covered everything except for required textbooks. Aware of how silly that sounded, she challenged the visitor to look it up. She was right. The cost for boys’ medical supplies at Permian was $6,750. The cost for teaching materials for the English department was $5,040, which Moore said included supplies, maintenance of the copying machine, and any extra books besides the required texts that she thought it might be important for her students to read. The cost of getting rushed film prints of the Permian football games to the coaches, $6,400, was higher as well, not to mention the $20,000 it cost to charter the jet for the Marshall game. (During the 1988 season, roughly $70,000 was spent for chartered jets.)

In 1963, Choh Hao Li, chairman and lone tenured faculty member in the Institute of Experimental Biology at Berkeley, announced that he had isolated and purified his sixth pituitary hormone, lipotropin. The magnitude of such a feat is clear considering that only one other person had ever purified a hormone, and that person was not coincidentally a student of Li's. The purification of lipotropin should have been a reason to celebrate; however, Li's colleagues at Berkeley acknowledged but did not rejoice in his success. As they perceived it, endocrinology was a scientific field that came out of the clinical sciences, which meant that Li's research was completely unsound, and they put enormous pressure on him to change his scientific topic. When that did not work, Wendell Stanley tried to 'promote [Li] out of the Virus Laboratory,' then later University Chancellor Clark Kerr threatened to discontinue the Institute for Experimental Biology because it did not fit with Berkeley's commitment to pure research. Things got infinitely worse for Li, of course, because he became perceived as less qualified with each professional achievement. [...] C. H. Li's travails at Berkeley are only half the story. In 1969, five years after transferring from Berkeley to UCSF, Li and his laboratory assistants assembled a highly complex synthetic version of human growth hormone (HGH) that was biologically active and could promote the growth of bones and muscle tissue. Rather than ignore or criticize the work, however, journalists waxed eloquently [sic] about Li's creation of HGH. One described it as no less than a panacea for most of the world's problems. Others clearly saw specific applications: 'it might now be . . . possible to tailor-make hormones that can inhibit breast cancer.' Li's discovery of synthetic HGH 'constituted a truly . . . great research breakthrough [that had] obvious applications,' ranging from 'human growth and development to . . . treatment of cancer and coronary artery disease.' Desperate letters poured in too; athletes wanted to know if HGH would help them become faster, bigger, stronger, and dwarfs from all over the world begged for samples of HGH or to volunteer as experimental subjects. Unlike at Berkeley, Li's discovery made him a hero at UCSF. None other than UCSF Chancellor Phillip Lee described Li's discovery as 'meticulous, painstaking, and brilliant research' and then tried to capitalize on the moment by asking the public and their political representatives to increase federal support of bioscience research. 'Research money is dwindling fast,' repeated Lee to anyone who cared to listen. 'We've proven than synthesis can be done, now all we need is the money and time to prove its tremendous value.' It is not surprising that federal and state money began to pour into Li's lab. What is shocking, however, is how quickly Li achieved scientific acclaim, not because he changed, but because the rest of the world around him changed so much.

It's an image that we're given. People have told us "No, these are the things that aren't for you." So one of the most empowering things as a young person was to go to one of the top schools and realize that there are all kinds of affirmative action. You know, there's legacy.. there's the college athlete. And colleges and universities have a right and an interest in diversifying. The problem is that when it comes to students of color, poor kids, all of a sudden that's affirmative action and that's a problem. And they're lesser than. I have been at probably every powerful table there is in the world. I've been at G-summits, I've been in castles and palaces, in boardrooms and academic universities, and I'm coming down from the mountaintop to tell every young person that is poor and working class and has been told regardless of the color of your skin that you don't belong, don't listen to them. They don't even know how they got at those seats.

A large group of charismatic athletes. A retarded young woman. The silence of the students and adults. The inclination to blame the woman and exonerate the men. These elements seemed to be linked by a familiar theme in my life in journalism. I began to frame Glen Ridge as a story of power and powerlessness: the power of young males and the community that venerated them, and the powerlessness of one marginalized young woman, one woman whom I knew about from the media coverage. Maybe there were other young women with stories to tell.

characters. When I was teaching I noticed that, each year, my students’ opinion of writers seemed to have sunk a little lower. But what does it mean when people who want to be writers see writers in such a negative light? Can you imagine a dance student feeling that way about the New York City Ballet? Or young athletes despising Olympic champions?

In a second experiment, researchers did not prime race, but instead the students were randomly assigned to one of two treatments.41 In both groups, the instructions said the exercises would become increasingly challenging. In one group, the instructions said the test was designed to measure personal factors correlated with natural athletic ability. Natural athletic ability was defined as “one’s natural ability to perform complex tasks that require hand-eye coordination, such as shooting, throwing, or hitting a ball or other moving objects.” In the other, the same test was presented as measuring “sports intelligence,” or “personal factors correlated with the ability to think strategically during an athletic performance.” In the “natural ability” condition, the African Americans did much better than the whites. In the “sports intelligence” condition, the whites did much better than the African Americans. Everyone, including the blacks themselves, had bought into the stereotype of the African American natural athlete and the white natural strategic player.

But it is not the remembrance of his athletic ability that—fifty years later—makes San Marcos students smile when they remember the stalwart Boody Johnson. “He was the fatherly type,” a football player says. “If things were going bad in a game, he’d call a time-out, and gather the team around, and say, ‘Now, look, fellows, we’re here to play football,’ and settle everybody down.” He didn’t settle down only football players. “You always felt you could go to him with your problems,” says one woman. “He was a very kind person. Gruff and tough, but very kind. He was just like a father to everybody.” His unselfishness was legendary, and not just on the football field (where, because the other halfback, Lyons McCall, a good runner, was a poor blocker, Boody volunteered to do most of the blocking while McCall carried the ball—if the team was behind in the last minutes of a game, however, the players would growl: “Give it to Boody”). “Boody was the kind of guy who, if you woke him up in the middle of the night and told him your car had broken down, would get out of bed and walk five miles to help you—nothing was too much trouble for him,” Vernon Whiteside says.

Cap the number of mandatory hours students must spend on a sports team or school activity each week. Research suggests that the benefits of athletics and activities diminish beyond about ten hours per week, total, for all commitments combined.

15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management

As today’s young people seek a more coherent sense of identity, the stress that formerly hit them in college, or even after college, now begins in middle school (or younger). By high school, many middle- and upper-class teenagers juggle digital calendars jammed with extracurricular activities that begin as early as 6:00 a.m., after-school study sessions, college entrance exam tutoring, and sports team practices that leave them trailing home after 10:00 p.m.11 Followed by two to three hours of homework.12 Athletes used to specialize in a single sport in high school; now that starts in elementary school. Previously, musicians and artists could freely dabble in various media and instruments throughout high school; present-day teenagers have to claim their craft in middle school. No longer can a kid flirt with a handful of hobbies, discovering various facets of their personality and passions, before choosing what they love. There’s so little time for thoughtful and measured exploration in high school that young adults end up exploring their skills and passions well into their twenties. A recent study showed that 13- to 17-year-olds are more likely to feel “extreme stress” than adults.13 Even more alarming is that the adults closest to young people are often blind to their heightened stress levels. Approximately 20 percent of teenagers confess that they worry “a great deal” about current and future life events. But only 8 percent of the parents of these same teenagers report that their child is experiencing a great deal of stress.14 Parents often don’t realize the constant heat felt by adolescents, increasing the pressure for them to figure out who they are and what’s important to them. After adolescence, emerging adults race from the proverbial stress-filled pot into the stress-fueled fire.15 Fewer college students are reporting “above-average” health since this question was first asked in 1985.16

I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty. —CLARK KERR, PRESIDENT OF UC BERKELEY, 1958–1967

to reserve the morning for doing "real work." I find I can focus more in the morning whereas it's harder to get focused after having been bombarded by meetings, so I try to save meetings for later in the day. –Nathan Blecharczyk is the co-founder of Airbnb. Taking