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“Acquire knowledge. It stays with you for a lifetime.”
I was never taught to acquire knowledge. It just sort of became an interest to me, then a desire then an outright passion. I love to read. I love to listen. I love to observe.
When I was in high school, I read a 400-page psychology book at the very back of the room in a class that wasn’t about psychology. I don’t know why it just interested me. I’m not saying you should read a psychology book; just pick up something that interests you but always keep your brain alert and accepting. Always talk to people that aren’t similar to you. Why? To listen and learn from them. Always read something that isn’t similar to you. Why? To acquire knowledge.
For high school students who need academic help:
“No man is an island.” Ask for help. The only dumb question is the one not asked (except for one). In high school, I would read everything I didn’t understand once. Then I would use angular brackets to highlight the most important things. Then I would read only the text within the angular brackets. Then I would keep re-reading it until I knew it by heart. It might seem ironic, but I taught myself how to learn. You have to understand how you think. When you understand that, it is a lot easier to figure out the steps of learning. For me, it is through re-reading the most important things. For you, it could be something different. Whatever it is, figure it out and then apply it.
I worked at Del Taco during I think my sophomore or junior year, usually on the weekends, and maybe 1 or 2 days during the weekdays. One time, it was raining hard and I didn’t want to use that as an excuse. So I put on an old t-shirt, pants and a light jacket in a plastic bag then in a school bag, I put my clothes that I was going to change into when I reached Del Taco. I got drenched. I mean soaked. Then I went to the bathroom, changed my clothes, and went to work. I cycled there with my bicycle that I bought with the money I earned from my newspaper delivery route.
For high school students that smoke:
With Indian culture (not Native American), my parents never told me don’t smoke. They just expected it, but I would say to the parents of children with multi-cultural backgrounds, don’t just expect that your child will not smoke. The way I learned to not smoke is in my senior year in high school, I saw a picture of a lung of a decades-long smoker that had cancer. The lung looked decayed, dirty, and dark. It was next to a picture of a healthy lung. The first reaction I had was I never want my lungs to look so unhealthy.
I was never taught to acquire knowledge. It just sort of became an interest to me, then a desire then an outright passion. I love to read. I love to listen. I love to observe.
When I was in high school, I read a 400-page psychology book at the very back of the room in a class that wasn’t about psychology. I don’t know why it just interested me. I’m not saying you should read a psychology book; just pick up something that interests you but always keep your brain alert and accepting. Always talk to people that aren’t similar to you. Why? To listen and learn from them. Always read something that isn’t similar to you. Why? To acquire knowledge.
For high school students who need academic help:
“No man is an island.” Ask for help. The only dumb question is the one not asked (except for one). In high school, I would read everything I didn’t understand once. Then I would use angular brackets to highlight the most important things. Then I would read only the text within the angular brackets. Then I would keep re-reading it until I knew it by heart. It might seem ironic, but I taught myself how to learn. You have to understand how you think. When you understand that, it is a lot easier to figure out the steps of learning. For me, it is through re-reading the most important things. For you, it could be something different. Whatever it is, figure it out and then apply it.
I worked at Del Taco during I think my sophomore or junior year, usually on the weekends, and maybe 1 or 2 days during the weekdays. One time, it was raining hard and I didn’t want to use that as an excuse. So I put on an old t-shirt, pants and a light jacket in a plastic bag then in a school bag, I put my clothes that I was going to change into when I reached Del Taco. I got drenched. I mean soaked. Then I went to the bathroom, changed my clothes, and went to work. I cycled there with my bicycle that I bought with the money I earned from my newspaper delivery route.
For high school students that smoke:
With Indian culture (not Native American), my parents never told me don’t smoke. They just expected it, but I would say to the parents of children with multi-cultural backgrounds, don’t just expect that your child will not smoke. The way I learned to not smoke is in my senior year in high school, I saw a picture of a lung of a decades-long smoker that had cancer. The lung looked decayed, dirty, and dark. It was next to a picture of a healthy lung. The first reaction I had was I never want my lungs to look so unhealthy.
Why I never did illegal drugs:
I was in a high school Bible afterschool club and here’s what I learned: Christ taught forgiveness, mercy and human values. After 2000 years, there is a sanctioned $200 billion illegal drug industry where humans inject or sniff into the very body that Christ sacrificed his body for. It doesn’t make sense. You cannot inject heroin on Friday and ask for forgiveness on Sunday. It doesn’t work like that.
One lesson I learned from my grandfather:
My grandfather’s name was Rajnikant Tapishanker Vyas. He was addicted to what is called in India chikni, or tobacco snootpowder. In India, the chikni is snuffed in the nose. He had been addicted for 40 years. He emigrated to the US in 1987. A few years later, when I was in High School, he wakes up one day and says ‘I don’t want to be addicted to chikni.’ What he did was he would slowly put less and less chikni in his nose, until he would sniff just the empty dabi, or container. Less than a month later, he wasn’t addicted. I don’t know what it was - a different environment from India but in the 1990s it took him less than a month to not be addicted to chikni. I was like ‘How can a man who was addicted to chikni for 40 years become deaddicted in less than a month? Even better is just don’t be addicted to tobacco or alcohol.’
A fictional story solution:
There was a runner that needed to strengthen his back, so he started jogging backwards. He could feel his back muscles. As he was jogging backwards, he saw a drug deal where the buyer bought from the drug dealer. He kept jogging. Then he saw a local distributor selling supplies to the local dealers. He kept jogging. Then he saw the vehicles the logistical distribution companies used to supply the local distributors. Then he saw the regional distributors. Then the national. He decided to keep jogging all the way back to the Central American countries where the society-destroying illegal drugs were manufactured. Then he took action. Because he had jogged backwards for so long, he had developed a moral backbone.
Somehow I got accepted into a program where only a dozen like them existed in the entire country at the time. The admissions rate was as low as the admissions acceptance rate into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I had everything planned out in my freshman year. I knew I wanted to graduate from UCLA. I knew the balance I needed to achieve. I knew I was going to get a Porsche convertible sports car. I don’t like Mercedes or BMWs. I knew I was going to buy a residence near the Pacific Ocean. I even knew what I was going to get as a customized California license plate on my Porsche: MDAT23. Now I have one that says AMERIGO.
I was in a high school Bible afterschool club and here’s what I learned: Christ taught forgiveness, mercy and human values. After 2000 years, there is a sanctioned $200 billion illegal drug industry where humans inject or sniff into the very body that Christ sacrificed his body for. It doesn’t make sense. You cannot inject heroin on Friday and ask for forgiveness on Sunday. It doesn’t work like that.
One lesson I learned from my grandfather:
My grandfather’s name was Rajnikant Tapishanker Vyas. He was addicted to what is called in India chikni, or tobacco snootpowder. In India, the chikni is snuffed in the nose. He had been addicted for 40 years. He emigrated to the US in 1987. A few years later, when I was in High School, he wakes up one day and says ‘I don’t want to be addicted to chikni.’ What he did was he would slowly put less and less chikni in his nose, until he would sniff just the empty dabi, or container. Less than a month later, he wasn’t addicted. I don’t know what it was - a different environment from India but in the 1990s it took him less than a month to not be addicted to chikni. I was like ‘How can a man who was addicted to chikni for 40 years become deaddicted in less than a month? Even better is just don’t be addicted to tobacco or alcohol.’
A fictional story solution:
There was a runner that needed to strengthen his back, so he started jogging backwards. He could feel his back muscles. As he was jogging backwards, he saw a drug deal where the buyer bought from the drug dealer. He kept jogging. Then he saw a local distributor selling supplies to the local dealers. He kept jogging. Then he saw the vehicles the logistical distribution companies used to supply the local distributors. Then he saw the regional distributors. Then the national. He decided to keep jogging all the way back to the Central American countries where the society-destroying illegal drugs were manufactured. Then he took action. Because he had jogged backwards for so long, he had developed a moral backbone.
Somehow I got accepted into a program where only a dozen like them existed in the entire country at the time. The admissions rate was as low as the admissions acceptance rate into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I had everything planned out in my freshman year. I knew I wanted to graduate from UCLA. I knew the balance I needed to achieve. I knew I was going to get a Porsche convertible sports car. I don’t like Mercedes or BMWs. I knew I was going to buy a residence near the Pacific Ocean. I even knew what I was going to get as a customized California license plate on my Porsche: MDAT23. Now I have one that says AMERIGO.
