successful learning

To be able to tap into this time and these emotions is very cathartic and enjoyable

can help the individual focus on the act of coloring intricate pictures for hours on end, vs. focusing on intrusive and troubling thoughts.

physical exercise improves brain performance

students today engage with electronic media that produce external images, they are not getting adequate practice in generating their own internal imaging and imagining, skills that not only affect survival but also increase retention and, through creativity, improve the quality of life

both music and written language involve similar decoding and comprehension reading processes and require a sensitivity to phonological and tonal distinctions

creating instrumental music provides many more cerebral advantages

raising IQ

You will want to leave the reader with something to think about, but you will want to avoid preaching.

But remember: the structure for your argument will in the end be determined by the content itself. No prefab model exists that will provide adequate structure for the academic argument.

You must also consider your reader

What in the text is leading you to respond a certain way? What's not in the text that might be contributing to your response?

academic writing must be more than personal response. You must write something that your readers will find useful

college you are part of a community of scholars.

the five-paragraph theme, aren't sophisticated or flexible enough to provide a sound structure for a college paper

crashed into a waterfall high above the sea. I got out of the car and sat down on a rock

"We're on a honeymoon trip

I took his card and examined it carefully for a moment, as if I couldn't quite read the small print. But I knew he was lying, so I leaned toward him and slapped him sharply in the nuts. Not hard, but very quickly, using the back of my hand and my fingers like a bullwhip, yet very discreetly.

Last night I sliced off the tips of two fingers and bled so profusely in the elevator that they had to take it out of service.

"You're a good cook! You make the best fruit cocktail ever."

"Did you get up today?" "Not today, maybe tomorrow."

I thrive on routines

In the dense, rainy, rain forest, it is hard to make a living. One way is fishing in the river that is from a mile wide to a 100 miles wide. Brazil nut collecting is another way. You can gather manioc. You are very limited as to what to do for a living in the Amazon rain forest.”By way of comparison, here is the beginning of a twenty-five-hundred-word story that I wrote the same month, typing it on my father’s gray oversized IBM electric in a single evening: >Nobody knew why the rain had not stopped. The weather report had said four in ten for light showers in the early morning. But here it was: 5 o’clock. And it was pouring. There was nothing to stop Lady Lieg from leaving the library. She had all the equipment, a fold-up umbrella, galoshes, etcetera and so on. But there was this book on Alla Nazimova that just begged to be taken. How could she resist it?

if we are not very, very good at something we tend to do it very poorly. Little in life comes naturally—except for our random, inexplicable, and often uncontrollable gifts

Other children collected coins or baseball cards; I tore obituaries of Sophie Tucker and David O. Selznick from the Hartford Courant and pasted them sloppily into a scrapbook.

I have sometimes wondered whether the I.Q. scores with which I was credited were nudged upward by my father, who was both a professional educator with a keen interest in gifted children and the person who administered my most triumphant examinations.

it has been a struggle for me to perceive just what these “boxes” were—why they were there, why other people regarded them as important, where their borderlines might be, how to live safely within and without them

Well, we went to Boston, Massachusetts through the town of Warrenville, Connecticut on Route 44A. It was very pretty and there was a church that reminded me of pictures of Russia from our book that is published by Time-Life. We arrived in Boston at 9:17. At 11 we went on a big tour of Boston on Gray Line 43, made by the Superior Bus Company like School Bus Six, which goes down Hunting Lodge Road where Maria lives and then on to Separatist Road and then to South Eagleville before it comes to our school. We saw lots of good things like the Boston Massacre site. The tour ended at 1:05. Before I knew it we were going home. We went through Warrenville again but it was too dark to see much. A few days later it was Easter. We got a cuckoo clock.

we can also find a way to make what happened in the past right

as we all do when we join Facebook, I took a chance and looked up Barbara

we kids, the ones who are left out in the cold, have a role in what happens to us. Not necessarily a fair one, but the facts of our unpopularity are not mysterious

I sit at my computer and wait for Barbara, who once poured yogurt on my head in front of the entire field hockey team, to tell me the details of her breakup with her current boyfriend. While I wait, I chat with Alison, who, years ago, stole my pants during gym and cut a hole in the crotch area, and who needs advice on how to sleep-train her baby. Still, while all this is going on, I play online Scrabble with Rachel, who, when I was 12, told everyone I had faked getting my period for attention.

if I can’t distinguish between a peach and an apricot I really can’t tell the difference between an excellent truffle and a mediocre one.

In high school, I started cooking pizzas—“from scratch,” I liked to say, “the ol’ fashioned way.

Some of this has to do with coming from a large family. Always afraid that I wouldn’t get enough

Taste buds paved beneath decades of tar

fifth if you take my teeth into consideration