My fifth grade teacher Mr. Straussberger noticed I was having trouble with some of my book reports, but he knew I loved to draw. He gave me extra credit if I did a drawing from the book that I was reading.

I wasn't that over-the-top, but I got sent to the principal in first grade for talking. And my father was for a long time the president of the Board of Education. That was always a hard note to bring home.

I had the fortune or misfortune to learn how to read fluently starting at the age of three. So I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit 1st grade. And I already knew that the teachers were lying to me.

I didn't win Class President in tenth grade. I was too chubby to win a role in the school play 'Oklahoma!' and I didn't make it into a singing and dancing group in high school for the same reason - too fat.

I was part of the Atlanta Boy Choir probably like fourth and fifth grade. I personally didn't enjoy the type of music that we were doing. I was more into like whatever was on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.

My family moved to Israel when I was eight until I was 10, and then we came back, and my parents split up. I was suddenly in a single-parent home and on scholarship. Fifth grade was such a hard year for me.

My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.'

In fourth grade, I learned that reading was serious business, not just a pleasant way to pass the time, and that like medicine or engineering, it had a definite, valuable purpose: to foster 'comprehension.'

Ever since third grade, I had a notebook and was putting together words just for fun. I liked different etymologies, different slang that came out in different eras. Different languages. Different dialects.

I was born in New York, but I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut - that's where I went to school. I remember begging my way into choir in the 3rd grade, because you're not supposed to get in until 4th grade.

I used to go to open gym to play with my friends and teammates, and I'd get there 30 to 45 minutes early so I could play one-on-one against my dad. When I reached ninth grade, I was finally able to beat him.

I never believed in pushing my kids. My dad was very unhappy I wasn't going to be a doctor, but I couldn't stand to see the sight of blood. And I wanted to be a lawyer since I was in seventh or eighth grade.

When I was 8, I began to study ballet. In seventh grade, my mother took me into New York to study at the School of American Ballet. I loved ballet - its precision, the escape from uncertainty, and the music.

If you tell someone, 'Hey, your daughter is going to win a Nobel Prize someday,' it makes it less likely. If you say, 'Your son is in danger of dropping out in the ninth grade,' it could make it more likely.

There was no professional basketball for me in the United States when I was in grade school and middle school. I could look to the Olympics and college basketball, but that was only on TV for the Final Four.

When I first saw Destiny's Child, I was in the fifth grade, and it made me want to sing and make music, and there would be these freestyles on the radio for what seemed like hours; it was just so cool to me.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

I can assure everyone that there is no academic fraud as it relates to my college transcript. I took every course with qualified members of the UNC faculty and I earned every grade whether it was good or bad.

I do home schooling. I went to regular school until fifth grade, and then I started doing home schooling, which it's completely different. I have a teacher on set with me and I just work with her, one-on-one.

I was bullied a lot as a kid in school from kindergarten up to third grade. I know what it feels like to be left out and to want to be different - more so, to want to not be different and want to just fit in.

My grandfather was a pawnbroker, and when I was in first or second grade, my parents opened their own store. I probably learned to count by putting pawn tickets in numerical order in the back room of the shop.

I failed eighth grade twice, and then they moved me up to ninth grade. Then I failed that and dropped out. My teacher would hand me a test, and I'd grade it myself with an F, then put my head down on the desk.

By the fourth grade, I graduated to an erector set and spent many happy hours constructing devices of unknown purpose where the main design criterion was to maximize the number of moving parts and overall size.

Told that the passing grade is a B or competence and that we will help you to get there, students do competent work. The lowest passing grade in the real world is competence. Why do schools accept so much less?

We shoot 'Hustle' for 12 to 16 weeks, so that's how long I'm here each year. I've always loved London. I lived here for three years back in the Seventies, when I did a TV series, 'The Protectors,' for Lew Grade.

I have olive trees and have tried my hand at curing small batches of olives, with varying degrees of success. So sometimes there are leftover olives I use in pasta sauce because they didn't quite make the grade.

When I was nine, I started reading Homer. I would get up at four o'clock in the morning, before I had to go to school, in third or fourth grade, and, for several hours, I would read 'The Iliad' or 'The Odyssey.'

This is sort of not expected, but I would love to produce a record for Missy Elliott. It would be totally different, but she makes party music. 'Lose Control' was my favorite song when I was in 5th or 6th grade.

I was bullied from grade one to six. Even middle school was tough for me. Everyone had these pre-existing friendships, and I was the new kid, who was acting, so that didn't help much either. It was really tough.

In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance to knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade.

I found that, academically, it really didn't matter whether I had received a certain grade in a class; it didn't matter too much what schools I wanted to attend... What matters is one's drive, one's intelligence.

I was reading five or six years ahead of my grade during public school. I was pretty bored. I made a contract with some of my teachers that if I didn't ask too many questions, I could work in the back of the room.

I'm actually one of the few kids in my grade, especially girls, who didn't end up going to college, just because I already knew what I wanted to do. I had already been actively working in music before I graduated.

Ever since my grade school days, as I mastered the art of 'faking sick' and I stumbled across 'The View,' I've been confusedly asking myself the same question... How do these dumb broads remain gainfully employed?

When you're from a boring town, you have to find things to do. It's funny: I always knew I wanted to make music, so I was always kind of ahead of my peers. I had an MP3 player by the time I was in the fourth grade.

When I was in fourth grade, I started writing a lot of poetry, and eventually, someone in the church was like, 'You should switch this over to rapping.' I went home and did that - started putting my poems over rap.

I remember I was in grade school, the fourth grade, in a free reading period in the library. Someone in my class found a copy of the Forbes 400, a list of the richest people in America, and my dad's name was on it.

My dad was a football player, and I've been the same size since eighth grade, so I get how it can be hard when you don't fit in with the 'normal-size' girls, or your butt and legs are too big for normal-size jeans.

My worst hairstyle was a bowl cut parted down the middle. It was the '90s. It was what you did. I had that from 4th grade until freshman year in high school. I'm glad the pictures exist. I had great hair back then.

I started doing my own animated movies when I was in ninth grade; that's when I got the filmmaking bug. When I was about 16, I started writing jokes for doing stand up, and then I was 19 and started doing stand up.

I was in public school until third or fourth grade, and after that, I was homeschooled. I was homeschooled until I was 14, and then when I was 14, I began attending college. Mom was not playing about that education.

I sort of half read Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge.' It was assigned in 10th grade, and I just couldn't get into it. About seven years later, I rediscovered Hardy and consumed four of his novels in a row.

I got into a fight in my 10th-grade year, and it was on ESPN. It was a mistake, and you learn from it. Starting from the seventh grade, everything's been magnified like that. It's kind of like you have no childhood.

In eighth grade, I went to home school, but it was a program meant for stay-at-home moms, and both my parents worked, so I had to grade my own papers. I'd be like, 'Ah man, you're close enough, you get 100 percent!'

Sixth grade was definitely a hard year for me. I got left out because I didn't go to any of the parties or hang out with the 'cool kids.' I was focusing on my academics. I wasn't allowed to go to any of the parties.

Started playing indoor volleyball in 5th grade. Started playing club volleyball when I was 15. Played in high school and at Florida Gulf Coast University. Started playing beach volleyball after graduating from FGCU.

In sixth or seventh grade, my teacher assigned me to write and sing a song. I remember sitting at the piano in my living room, trying to get that song perfect. That was the moment I realized I really love doing this.

My earliest thought, long before I was in high school, was just to go away, get out of my house, get out of my city. I went to Medford High School, but even in grade school and junior high, I fantasized about leaving.

On Facebook, your past comes into your present when someone from your second grade class suddenly pops up to send you a message, and your future is being manipulated by what Facebook knows to put in front of you next.

I learned how to read in second grade, and I entered a summer contest at my local library in Chattanooga, Tennessee. If you read more books than anybody else, you got your Polaroid up on the bulletin board, and I did.

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