Masi Oka Quotes

My parents are wonderful, practical, sensible people, and the expectation was that I would study something academic.

Most Indians go into education. Their parents just push them into education like parents in Australia push them into sports.

You know, I never really paid attention to sports, which, coming from the mecca of football in Texas, is kind of odd. I played sports, but I was nerdy. Having a single mother, the pressure was on me to get good grades and a scholarship and go to college.

My parents were educated in the Turkish system and went straight from high school to medical school; my mom, who had skipped a grade, was dissecting corpses at age seventeen. Growing up in America, I think I envied my parents' education. By comparison, everything I did in school seemed so sort of low-stakes and infantilizing.

My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.

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.

I have never gotten a B in my life. I would honestly be mortified if I got a B. I'm so academically driven.

I went to a very academically competitive high school. So I was always quite studious and quiet, just to keep up with the other geniuses who were in my school.

I never really paid attention to sports, which, coming from the mecca of football in Texas, is kind of odd. I played sports, but I was nerdy. Having a single mother, the pressure was on me to get good grades and a scholarship and go to college.

I was a D student in high school and on the dean's list in college.

It was becoming clear that, from being at the top at Holy Cross, we were at the bottom at St. Peter's. Objectively, this was very good, for it offered us a challenge and an opportunity to grow if we were ready to take it; and we surely were.

I'm a child of academics.

I was a very studious student and usually got A's. I did not like school, because I wasn't popular - I was a nerd.

I graduated college with a 3.5 GPA, when I came into college barely able to get in.

I think my parents - my mother in particular - always believed I should go as far as I could with my studies. There was no pressure, but at each step there were people who you admired, and you strived to those levels.

I passed the 11-plus and went up to the senior school, where my two older sisters had already gone. I was in the 'A' stream, but in the third year, they asked me to give up Latin; no one had ever got 7 per cent before.

My parents were typical Asian parents, and they do, like all parents, want their children to be successful. They really encouraged my brother and I to study math and science, and that's what we did as kids.

Both my parents are teachers, and while they were always cool with what I did, they never let me take my education lightly.

People are still programmed to think that if your child doesn't get straight As, get A-levels and go to a Russell Group university, that somehow they are not going to achieve in life. I think that's sad.

As soon as I learned that I was a finalist, it was no question in my mind that I was going to put myself into the competition for the Rhodes scholarship.

My mum and dad pushed me to work hard in my earlier years in education.

You don't immediately adopt the values and the framework of this, the academically successful world, just because okay now you kids get to go to high school.

When I was in grade five or six, I just remember quite a lot of people were always talking about me like I was some kind of math genius. And there were just so many moments when I realized, like, okay, why can't I just be like some normal person and go have a 75% average like everyone else.

The Japanese are the ultimate students: they analyse things in so much detail... until they have pretty much mastered whatever they are studying.

My mum's always had big aspirations because I'm an academic. I always got good grades at school. GCSEs were just a breeze for me.