H. W. Brands Quotes

I don't know why people question the academic training of an athlete. Fifty percent of the doctors in this country graduated in the bottom half of their classes.

I could have been a Rhodes Scholar, except for my grades.

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

I stood as well as any in my class, but the test of scholarship at that day was contemptible

I was raised by a single mother, and she felt the Japanese education system, albeit wonderful, keeps you in a certain range. You have to be better than this level but below this level.

My mother ended up getting a Ph.D. of her own, in chemistry, and eventually became a tenured professor.

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.

In the course of my research, I've read a lot of incredibly bad books - mostly by academics. I'm puzzled as to just why their writing is so terrible. These are smart people, after all.

Academic writing is such a different way of writing.

You know, sometimes I'll go to an 8th-grade graduation and there's all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it's just 8th grade ... An 8th-grade education doesn't cut it today. Let's give them a handshake and tell them to get their butts back in the library!

I had been an academic all my life. As academics, you tend to believe the smartest people are in academia.

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 don't think, in my entire 18 years as a student, I ever used an exclamation point in an academic paper.

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.

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

I graduated in biology by overcoming an incredibly impossible science workload in college. The knowledge does nothing for me, but knowing I achieved that makes me feel like I can achieve anything because those science classes in biology are just impossible.

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.

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.

I'm not just a dumb basketball player who got lucky and graduated from college. My ratio for professor to student was nine-to-one so it wasn't like I wasn't going to class. I was going to class every day.

History belongs to everyone. I don't think you have to give up scholarly standards. But I also don't think you want to write something that is impenetrable. You try as hard as you can to be readable.

I had the kind of family where I was told it was my job to study. They would work out the finances.

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?'

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.

Standardized tests don't care if you're white or black, short or tall, or even the rate at which you learned the course material. At the end of the day, all it cares about is whether you know what you're supposed to know. It can't be cheated, bent, or bargained with.