School
(page 2)
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
We don't stop going to school when we graduate.
Underwater, I experience space with my body. I'll see a school of fish gathering and moving together and I'll exclaim, 'This is architecture.'
Qualities you need to get through medical school and residency: Discipline. Patience. Perseverance. A willingness to forgo sleep. A penchant for sadomasochism. Ability to weather crises of faith and self-confidence. Accept exhaustion as fact of life. Addiction to caffeine a definite plus. Unfailing optimism that the end is in sight.
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
You know what they call the fellow who finishes last in his medical school graduating class? They call him 'Doctor'.
My marks were always bad, and I was a bad influence on other children, so they would explain to my mother that they could retain me only by being partial towards me, and so I should offer to leave the school myself. I would barely get 40-50% and was also extremely naughty.
My father is an amazing person. While he was a huge star, he never carried his stardom home and always remained simple and just our father at home. I have four siblings, and we were all very grounded. We lived a very simple life: would go in an auto rickshaw to school, played with normal boys.
I was a pitcher, shortstop and outfielder, and the Yankees tried to sign me out of high school as a first-round draft pick in 1981. I turned them down to go to college.
In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.
It seems like I've been writing since birth! I started writing poems before I got to school. I wrote the class musical in first grade — both words and music. It was about a bunch of vegetables who got together in a salad. I played the chief carrot!
It occurred to me in my junior year of high school. I got my first letter from a big college. I still have that letter to this day — a letter from Indiana.
I've always been really ambitious, whatever I do. At school, I always wanted to be the best in the class — no, it wasn't enough to be the best in the class, I'd want to be the best in the country.
My education was paid for by the RAF Benevolent Fund, so a charity school, run like an orphanage, with uniforms and beatings. It was tough, but it got me to Cambridge — like being a chrysalis suddenly becoming a butterfly.
I used to cheerlead in high school, and I had the biggest crush on one of my teammates' brothers. I was a great tumbler, so when he showed up at practice one day, I tried to impress him, but I ended up landing on my face! When I got off the ground, I had rug burn on my nose. I was in tears because it hurt so bad!
When I was four, we had to choose a musical instrument to play at school, and I chose the cello. I played until I was 18, and although I found it nerve-racking to play solo, I loved playing in an orchestra. When I left school I didn't carry on with it, which I regret.
I got attention by being funny at school, pretending to be retarded, and jumping around with a deformed hand.
My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
You have to stay in school. You have to. You have to go to college. You have to get your degree. Because that's the one thing people can't take away from you is your education. And it is worth the investment.
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