John Irving Quotes

I had never passed a single school exam, and clearly never would.

If a teacher goes, 'Do you guys want an easy test?' You're going to say, 'Heck, yeah.' The less you've got to study, I'm going ace this test.

I was one of those kids that could just show up and take the test and do well on it. I didn't study a whole lot.

I was always pretty good at school, but a lot of it was memorising, maybe cheating off your mates, stuff that gets you through.

The SAT is not perfect. We all know smart, knowledgeable people who do badly on standardized tests. But neither is it useless. SAT scores do measure both specific knowledge and valuable thinking skills.

The biggest problem with dyslexic kids is not the perceptual problem, it is their perception of themselves. That was my biggest problem.

And finally I begin to have such a success in my examinations that I found myself in a career you see.

I was never very good at exams, having a poor memory and finding the examination process rather artificial, and there never seemed to be enough time to follow up things that really interested me.

I don't really revise. I tend to rewrite.

As you know from school, it's when you have not prepared for the test that you have the fear of failing. And if you have prepared, even if you fail, you've done your best.

If I were to take an undergraduate chemistry exam, I would probably fail.

I do believe that when your child does poorly on a test, your first step should not necessarily be to attack the teacher or the school's curriculum. It should be to look at the idea that, maybe, the child didn't work hard enough.

I'm not really book-smart.

I remember doing my SATs on a film set; you had to complete the tests in a certain time and, obviously, you couldn't be interrupted. I think I did pretty well; it wasn't too difficult.

I'm really bad at tests of any kind, so I'm bad at auditions. I consider myself educated most of the time, but when I'm under the gun, I just fail.

I am a really bad test taker. I can get straight As in school, but I get nervous on test.

I'd never taken an SAT prep course. They were for weaker students.

I failed chemistry. I almost failed algebra.

Math was a two-part exam and I once didn't go for the second part. I knew I'd done so badly on the first it was hopeless. I re-took it about four or five times. I think I eventually got it by getting the top GCSE grade.

I didn't pass the scholarship exam for Oxford because of poor mathematics.

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

A final is a final, and is motivation in itself.

So I think it's like the night before the exam. Obviously, you stress. But when you have done your job well, then you need to go down, relax and enjoy.

School did stress me out, like it does for a lot of young people. I didn't like having to do work that I didn't care about.

I'm telling you, studying for week to week in the NFL, and memorization, and reflexive recall... you have to drive it into your brain so far.