My grades in high school were not very good. I was that kind of perfectionist that figured if you can't do it perfectly, why do it at all?
My grades in high school were not very good. I was that kind of perfectionist that figured if you can't do it perfectly, why do it at all? So my grades weren't great, but I feel like, is there any other way that I could have gotten into NYU? I don't know. I think that it definitely worked in my favor in some ways.
Obama has built his public image around his ability to bridge divisions - racial, ideological or generational. And that was his reputation, even at Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the 'Law Review.
I'm not very nostalgic, you see. I just don't think anybody has that kind of thing anymore. By culture, by breeding, by whatever, it's not there. The kids today-what the hell are they going to be? I like young people - yes, I do. But when I talk to people at the schools, and they say, "I saw you on the Twit," I don't even know what they are talking about.
After school, I went to Damascus to study law and history, which I didn't really like. I didn't like history, in particular. In Syria, the regime was trying to present to us a distorted version of the past. Assad was shown as the father of history. So I decided to shift to film, which was something I had always loved as a teenager.
I moved to New York to go to Julliard Drama School. Didn't sing a single note of music.
Ever since I was a child, I always had insecurity or suspicions about my own personal identity. That's why I started going to a lot of movie theaters, because I felt more comfortable there than at school. Now, the search for a personal identity is becoming a common topic for young Japanese people, and it's a big theme in their own lives. But it's been a theme in my life, as well, ever since I was young.
Modeling was never anything that was a career choice. I did catalog work in Toronto to make money so that I could go to school.
I have been a goof my whole life. I wasn't really the popular girl in school and didn't have any boyfriends in high school because I was a nerd. I was a geek.
It took the United States Army to get one Negro into the University of Mississippi; it took troops to get a few Negroes in the white schools at Little Rock and another dozen places in the South.
It has been nine years since the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated schools, yet less than ten per cent of the Negro students in the South are in integrated schools. That isn't integration, that's tokenism!
As long as the factories are in the hands of the whites, the housing is in the hands of the whites, the school system is in the hands of the whites, you have a situation where the blacks are constantly begging the whites can they use this or can they use that. That's not any kind of equality of opportunity, nor does it lend toward one's dignity.
When you have to pass a law to make a man let me have a house, or you have to pass a law to make a man let me go to school, or you have to pass a law to make a man let me walk down the street, you have to enforce that law and you'd have to be living actually in a police state. It would take a police state in this country.
I've always been a daydreamer, and sometimes in lessons my mind would drift and I'd imagine that on the way home a terrorist might jump out and shoot me on those steps. I wondered what I would do. Maybe I'd take off my shoes and hit him, but then I'd think if I did that there would be no difference between me and a terrorist. It would be better to plead, 'OK, shoot me, but first listen to me. What you are doing is wrong. I'm not against you personally, I just want every girl to go to school.'
The best way to fight terrorism is not through guns. It's through pens, books, teachers and schools.
It is not time to tell the leaders to realize how important education is - they already know it - their own children are in good schools. Now it is time to call them to take action.
I think fashion is really opened me up as a person. All eyes are on you when you do the shows and when you do the photo shoots. You have to know how to act around people. I used to be a shy kid in school. I didn't know how to interact with people and now I find it so easy. Fashion has really done something great for me and it's really changed me as a person. I've changed my style as well.
To me, it's normal. We summered in Vermont, and me and my sister Ilyasah went to one of the top ten schools in the country [the Hackley School].
I think Malcolm Forbes got kicked out of our school and [Ethiopian Emperor] Hallie Selassie's grandkids went there, too. Because of security reasons you have to go to those schools. We had a privileged life, fine, but also very secure. So I think it's great where the [Barack] Obama daughters are going to school.
I do not think we are ever going to be able to, for a long time, get the kind of quality of school personnel that we need in our schools, especially in the areas of science and math. One of the answers to that problem is to use more educational technology.
My parents were kids when I was born. My mother was 16. My father was 17, and they got married in high school. And they split a few years later. When they split was when all that was happening also, and he - they were just coming into themselves. But they remained friends.
I got into [acting] so late because of sports. And then when I was in grad school, I sort of got lulled into basically forgetting I was black, in - meaning that everyone you play at a conservatory, 95 percent of the characters are non-black.
I wanted to get that scholarship to - a division one scholarship and play ball and go to school for free. And that, to me, was - I was always about getting to that next step. If I could get to that next place, then I could figure out essentially what to do with being in that space and how to manage my time and handle those - handle all the benefits of being in that space in a way that would get me to the next place.
How do I transform and be believable as Krogstad in "A Doll's House" or Sir Peter Teazle in "A School for Scandal".
Gay, straight - whatever - adolescents in high school and coming out of junior high, that's such a difficult, awkward period and kids can be so cruel and mean.
