Rana el Kaliouby Quotes

From the time I started school, it was clear to everyone that I wasn't learning at the same pace as other kids.

I didn't only have a perceptual problem, I was also so nervous and so upset. The process just didn't work. I lost enthusiasm for school and I flunked second grade. The teachers said I was lazy.

I wasn't good at school.

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 was terrible at school.

I have this rather amazing report which, roughly speaking, says I was the worst student the biology master had ever taught.

I don't know whether I much enjoyed education. I was not academically gifted.

I failed chemistry. I almost failed algebra.

Academically I was never that great and I was not really into school. I don't know, I just really had a problem focusing but singing always came naturally.

I realized that there are many people who are very good students, but they think of themselves as bad students. At the end of the day, what they are really missing is way to understand where their gaps are and a way to address those gaps.

I was good in biology, but I did very badly in chemistry, and my parents were horrified by that.

I struggled academically in high school because it was hard to focus. It was hard to focus on those things that were other than artistic stuff.

I never read in school. I got really bad grades-D's and F's and C's in some classes, and A's and B's in other classes. In the second week of the 11th grade, I just quit. When I was in school, it was really difficult. Almost everything I learned, I had to learn by listening. My report cards always said that I was not living up to my potential.

Once they arrive, affirmative action kids are generally left to sink or swim academically. Brown (University) offers plenty of counseling and tutoring to struggling students, but, as any academic Dean will tell you, it's up to the students to seek it out, something that a drowning minority student will seek to avoid at all costs, fearing it will trumpet a second-class status.

I never thrived in high school.

At school, I had to work really hard to get a D in maths. And I wasn't slacking off; I actually did work quite hard.

Truancy rates are directly correlated to low graduation rates.

When I was in college, I didn't like physics a lot, and I really wasn't very good at physics. And there were a lot of people around me who were really good at physics: I mean, scary good at physics. And they weren't much help to me, because I would say, 'How do you do this?' They'd say, 'Well, the answer's obvious.'

I was a very, very slow learner. I was good at nothing.

I'm not a policy oriented person. I'm constrained to what I study. But educational policy has not yet taken adequate note of the whole child. Kids are not just their IQ or standardized test scores. It matters whether or not they show up, how hard they work.

When I turned 17, I created a website for the students at my University. It enabled students to share lectures and discuss exams, and became popular very quickly.

I have seen schools across the country working long and hard to embed a commitment to the unlimited development of every student into their cultures. The result, in terms of motivated learners and test scores, often is spectacular.

I took organic chemistry, and I got my first-ever F. I ended up going to summer school, and the whole time, I'm thinking, 'I am not good at sciences.'

My attendance in school was 30 per cent. I was always travelling with my parents.

If you get behind in first grade, then you're behind every grade from then on.