Lauren Willig Quotes

I was an anxious kid. I worried about getting homework finished, even back when homework didn't count for anything.

I haven't written a brochure yet. It's killing me. I know I have a brochure or pamphlet in me yet.

In school, many of us procrastinate and then successfully cram for tests. We get the grades and degrees we need to get the jobs we want, even if we fail to get a good general education.

I had to get good grades and do well in school - my mother was an assistant principal and my father was a teacher - and they took this very seriously.

Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater.

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

My parents don't press it but, you know, they're into good grades.

I've thought about writing, but it hasn't happened yet. It's like schoolwork - you start doing your revisions two nights before you're compelled to turn it in.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

I hate tests. It's a really lousy way to judge a person's ability.

I did not like prizes at school. I didn't like tests or exams, or the 11+, or O-levels. Later I hated B.A.s and M.A.s. The reason I hated them is that I don't like being tested, failed or falsely praised by anyone.

I loved statistics from a young age. And I studied very much in Sweden. I used to be in the upper quarter of all courses I attended. But in St. John's, I was in the lower quarter. And the fact was that Indian students studied harder than we did in Sweden. They read the textbook twice, or three times or four times.

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

In my case, the long gaps between my books have got quite a lot to do with lack of confidence. A lot of the time when I'm not writing I start thinking I can't do it.

We have placed more emphasis on grades and school ranking than on genuine education.

I'm the type of person, I have to study to get an A on the test.

I was in honors classes in high school. I'd get an A on every test, but I had a 1.9 grade point average. The teacher would say, 'You didn't do your homework.' I'd say, 'But isn't the homework supposed to be the lead-up to the test?'

I'm just very, very slow. I would not make it as a journalist, I've got to tell you. I sweat bullets over every sentence, and sometimes, you know, a day will pass and I've written one paragraph, and I've been at the computer for four hours.

Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything -- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.

Your grades are not your destiny: they're just letters and numbers which rate how well you performed in one artificial arena, once.

My grades in high school were not very good. I was that kind of perfectionist that figured if you can't do it perfectly, why do it at all?

I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.

How many more years will our educators continue to lecture us on the evils of whipping children until they bring home high grades? Year after year we listen to these fellows tell us that it is not the grade that counts but the development of the child's personality. After the lecture they go back to all the best schools and reject our children because they have C averages.

Duke is in extremely competitive environment. In my high school, I think I got one B my whole four years. I was used to being the smartest kid in every class I was in, and then I went to Duke and suddenly I was the dumbest kid in every class. Everybody there is up to something.

We send our kids off to school to major in labeling and think the ones who do it best deserve the highest grades.