Quotes by Stefanie Weisman

As you work to become a better student, remember that learning is far more important than the numbers on your transcript. I know it can be hard sometimes to remember what youre in school for. In some places, students go crazy over a tenth of a point - but this is an unhealthy and unsustainable way to manage your education. The real reason youre in school is to grow as a person and fulfill your potential.

High school and college students like to torture their bodies. They pull countless all-nighters, continually skip breakfast, eat nothing but ramen noodles for dinner, find creative new ways to guzzle alcohol, transform into couch potatoes, and gain 15 pounds at the freshman dinner buffet. At least, thats the stereotype.

A lot of high-profile companies are recognizing the benefits of power napping. . . . Its like kindergarten all over again.

Being a successful student is about more than reading, writing, and rithmetic. Its about being a skilled negotiator, a keen observer, and a master planner.

Dont forget that your happiness is the most important thing, and that you should never equate your GPA or school with your sense of self-worth. . . . If youre feeling overwhelmed, take a step back and remind yourself that you are not your grades.

Ah, group projects. Some people love em, some people hate em - okay, most people hate em. Your grade now depends on other people whom you may never have met before, and youve somehow got to do the impossible: find some time when a bunch of super-busy high school or college students can actually meet in person.

In my freshman and sophomore years of college, I read dozens of books by the great thinkers of Western civilization. From Plato to Nietzsche, Homer to Shakespeare - you name it, I read it. At times it drove me crazy - picture reading hundreds of pages that sound like this every week: All rational knowledge is either material and concerned with some object, or formal and concerned only with the form of understanding and of reason themselves and with the universal rules of thought in general without regard to differences of its objects. Come again, Kant?

Forget physics, forget organic chem, forget reading James Joyces Ulysses - organizing your time is one of the biggest challenges youll face in your academic career.

Memorization has gotten a bad rap recently. Lots of students, and even some educators, say that being able to reason is more important than knowing facts; and besides, why bother committing things to memory when youve got Google? My response to this - after Ive finished inwardly groaning - is that of course reasoning is important, but that doesnt mean you shouldnt know facts as well. Its not like you have to choose between one or the other. Besides, facts give you a foundation on which to reason about things.