Quotes & Sayings About Going Back To University

You feel the pressure of going to university because you need a back-up plan, which is why I enrolled. — Chris Lilley

When I [first] went to university, I was doing foreign languages, because I had done them since I was 13 years old. I had done French and German. I picked up Italian, just sort of blasted through the exams, [and then] took off overseas, because I wanted to be an actor. I thought, "I'm just not academic." I'm not very competitive, in terms of acting. But since going back to university, I've realized, I am highly competitive. — Nick Offerman

We've worshipped many gods. Some have been consigned to the scrapheap, others to museums. Let us make Truth into a god! A god before whom each of us shall answer according to his own conscience, and not as a class, or a university year, or a collective, or a people... Let us be charitable to those who have paid a greater price for insight than we ourselves. Remember: 'I brought my friend, and my own truth, back with me from a raid.. Head, arms and legs, all severed, and his skin flayed... — Svetlana Alexievich

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it. — Elizabeth Moon

In some ways I'm a frustrated scientist or mathematician. The amount of times I've thought I'd go back to university and do theoretical physics because I like the big questions, but really I know now that that's not quite me. What's me is to do it in novels. — Scarlett Thomas

When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding. — Arsene Wenger

Do you think parents at your school would rather their kid be depressed at Yale or happy at University of Arizona?" The colleague quickly replied, "My guess is 75 percent of the parents would rather see their kids depressed at Yale. They figure that the kid can straighten the emotional stuff out in his/her 20's, but no one can go back and get the Yale undergrad degree."1 — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Moreover, an archetype exists in the nation's consciousness that connects student loan debt with irresponsibility. This is a result of well-publicized accounts of loan defaults in decades past in which students took out loans with no intention of ever paying them back and simply filed for bankruptcy after graduation. This perception was sufficiently strong that in the 1970s, Congress was convinced to remove bankruptcy protections from student loans. However, according to a March 2007 paper by John A. E. Pottow of the University of Michigan, this perception had a fatal flaw: "The fatal problem is that there are no empirical data to buttress the myth that students defraud creditors any more than other debtors."1 In fact, it was shown that when student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, there was a less than 1 percent bankruptcy rate among student debtors.2 Nevertheless, this misconception has been so often repeated that it is now indelibly etched in the public's mind. — Alan Collinge

Spoilers follow
I started reading the third act of Hamlet, and I got about two pages in when I realized there's no point.
I am never going back to school.
I am never going to the university.
I am never going to watch wolves stalk through the northern forests or elephants graze on the savanna. I am never going to have sex or get married or raise a family. I'm never going to have a first apartment, a first house, a first car. I'm never — Megan Crewe

Charles Peirce wrote the definition of University in the Century Dictionary. He called it an institution for purposes of study. They wrote to him that their notion had been that a university was an institution for instruction. He wrote back that if they had any such notion they were grievously mistaken, that a university had not and never had had anything to do with instruction and that until we got over this idea we should not have any university in this country. — Max Harold Fisch

We drove through the Old Dominion University campus, where a small permanent lake has formed in the back corner of a huge parking lot. "You can't pave under water," he noted dryly, "so this obviously wasn't under water when this parking lot was paved. — Deborah Blum

I went to Hong Kong in '97 to witness the handover after graduating university, and then I was gonna backpack around Asia and then come back here and look for a job. — Daniel Wu

Getting a good job, working long hours, keeping your skills relevant, navigating the politics of an organization, finding a live/work balance...these are all really hard. In contrast, respecting institutions, having manners, demonstrating a level of humility...these are all (relatively) easy. Get the easy stuff right. In and of themselves they will not make you successful. However, not possessing them will hold you back and you will not achieve your potential. — Scott Galloway

(On winning the 800 meters in front of the home fans) I was really excited to come back here. Of course you are always a little nervous because you never know how the race is going to unfold, plus it is the first one of the season as well. I was really excited to come out and perform today. I give special thanks to Mario Sategna and The University of Texas for all of their support. — Leonel Manzano

After qualifying for a B.Sc. in pharmacology, I spent a few months in Sheffield University as a research worker in the pharmacology department but then went back to Oxford to the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research in order to study for a D. Phil. with Dr. Geoffrey Dawes. — John Vane

Visitors say, 'Real shrunken heads! Wow! How were they made? By slitting the skin, taking out the skull and brains and steaming them with hot sand? Gross!' But what no one asks is: how did they get here? What are they doing hanging up in a university museum in the south of England? Once you start to answer that question, you realize that shrunken heads like these are a product as much of European curiosity, European taste and European purchasing power as they are of an archaic tribal custom. It is time to turn the spotlight round and point it back at people like you and me, and at our ancestors, who were responsible for bringing hundreds of these heads into museums and people's homes and who delighted in them as much as -- if not more than -- the people who created them in the first place. After all, it is not the Shuar who are pressing their noses to the glass of an exhibition case in an Oxford University museum. — Frances Larson

I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one always seeking to recapture the unobtainable. Like those people who were always happiest at school or university. Always going back. No reunion ever missed. It always seemed to me rather pathetic. — P.D. James

I've been thinking about going back to university. I need more tools to continue to apply to the music. I've got to open myself up to more language. — Ana Tijoux

Nobody steals books except kleptomaniacs and university students. In most places you can leave a book on the street and come back for in the next day. — Mark Helprin

I've learned what my contemporaries will have learned in their first terms at college, or university - that the first friends you make in a new place are the ones you usually spend the next three terms trying to lose, and that it's the people who are quietly holding back, and standing in the corner, that you will want to be with, when your second year comes around. — Caitlin Moran

The operation would be in a week...I didn't know if I would survive. How I longed to go back to reading! There was nowhere I longed to be more than the university campus. I was preparing for a master's on fantasy literature. I was interested in why the country's literature did not include this distinctive genre. I had this great passion for studying and writing, which they explained in my household with the story of the umbilical cord. When I was born, and at my father's request, my elder sister buried my umbilical cord in the courtyard of her primary school. My father attributed my {brother's} academic failure to the fact that my mother buried his umbilical cord in the garden of our house. — Hassan Blasim

I'm an academic. I teach at the university, and that's where I will go back to. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Looking back over a decade one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks. Yet perhaps it is there at Princeton, only more elusive than under the skies of the Prussian Rhineland or Oxfordshire; or perhaps some men come upon it suddenly and possess it, while others wander forever outside. Even these seek in vain through middle age for any corner of the republic that preserves so much of what is fair, gracious, charming and honorable in American life. — F Scott Fitzgerald

For the walk of shame the next morning, I had to run two miles in flip-flops to make it back to the car pool to go donate plasma. University was an interesting time. — Tyler Oakley

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me. — Patrick Rothfuss

I like the idea of going to university and studying. I didn't do it because it was a back-up plan. In some ways, it kind of goes hand in hand with acting. There's a lot of analysis and enriching your mind, as well as problem solving. And it can only help being around people as an actor. — Yasmin Paige

I went to the Westminster College for Men in Missouri, which is what it was called back then, and transferred to the University of Denver where I ultimately got my degree. — Ted Shackelford

The church must change, Brother,' Gheorg had said one day long ago, back when they were still theology students at the University of Leipzig. Christian faith cannot be the tool of a monarch who sells God's pardon in exchange for money and power. Our Lord speaks to ALL men, Mathias. The Church must be a place where all men can meet and pray, not a place where they must submit to the power of other men. God's word must reach everyone equally. — Riccardo Bruni

Tipping as an American practice stretches back centuries. "There are records of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson giving tips to their slaves," said Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, who has studied changes in tipping habits. In the 1940s, he said, the average restaurant tip was about 10 percent. "It's very clear that tip sizes have increased over time," he said, adding that he could not predict how high they would go. — Anonymous

Donald Trump is a world-class con artist. He conned all these people that signed up for Trump University. Now he's trying to do the same thing to Republican voters. He's trying to convince them that somehow he's the guy that is going to stand up to illegal immigration, but he hires illegal immigrants, that he's fighting for American workers, but he's hiring foreign workers for his hotels, that he's going to bring back jobs from China and from Mexico, but, in fact, he's creating jobs in China and Mexico, because that's where all of his suits and ties that he sells are made. — Marco Rubio

April 26 - I know I shouldn't hang around the college when I'm through at the lab, but seeing the young men and women going back and forth carrying books and hearing them talk about all the things they're learning in their classes excites me. I wish I could sit and talk with them over coffee in the Campus Bowl Luncheonette when they get together to argue about books and politics and ideas. It's exciting to hear them talking about poetry and science and philosophy - about Shakespeare and Milton; Newton and Einstein and Freud; about Plato and Hegel and Kant, and all the other names that echo like great church bells in my mind. Sometimes I listen in on the conversations at the tables around me, and pretend I'm a college student, even though I'm a lot older than they are. I carry books around, and I've started to smoke a pipe. It's silly, but since I belong at the lab I feel as if I'm a part of the university. I hate to go home to that lonely room. — Daniel Keyes

The main reason for the break was a combination of travel and going back to university, which drew me into theatre more than music. I did stuff on acoustic guitar when I was traveling, filed it away and made notes, without it being musical notation. Just taped the odd thing, did a sketch, stuck it on a cassette. I thought at some point, I'll go back to it. Some of it I did use in '84-'85 when I started working in the Free Theatre in Christchurch. So it might seem like I had given up after the Pin Group, but I just went into a different avenue. — Roy Montgomery

When I first left university, I thought about going into the private sector. But I discovered when I went to interview that I could only have a career in the back office, or doing HR. The attitude was, 'My dear lady, you cannot possibly think about going on the board.' — Pauline Neville-Jones

It's good to go back and look at what other states are doing. For example, Mayo Clinics and the University of Minnesota had a collaborative grant program that we modeled our program after, so we went back to talk to them about the successes of their program. It's been very successful, the state is going back to fund it again, and it's resulted in a great deal of collaboration and specifically patented technology. — Brian Thompson

I will tell them that you can work hard, you can improve your life and the lives of your children in one day when you deliver your youngest child to the university, you will look her in the eye and say, 'You will give back.' — Mia Love

Grub Street Writers is the reason I've stayed in Boston. I started teaching for Grub back in 1997, when founder Eve Bridburg, a Boston University M.A. alumna, as I am, kindly gave me my first job out of grad school. — Jenna Blum

I thought I wanted to go to drama school or university, and that would have been a completely different life. But what got me was the sound, and hearing it. Hearing everything so loud, I loved that back in the studio. I loved that from the very beginning. — Marianne Faithfull

She went on to Seishin University, the famous women's private college, and studied abroad in France for two years. A couple of years after she got back I had a chance to see her, and when I did, I was floored. I'm not sure how to put it, but she seemed faded. Like something that's been exposed to strong sunlight for a long time and the color fades. She looked much the same as before. Still beautiful, still with a nice figure ... but she seemed paler, fainter than before. It made me feel like I should grab the TV remote to ramp up the color intensity. It was a weird experience. It was hard to imagine that someone could, in the space of just a few years, visibly diminish like that. — Haruki Murakami

He wants to play major college football at a university far away, where nobody will know about his tragic family history. Then he wants to play in the NFL.

Every catch brings him closer to that reality. That's how he thinks of it, anyway. Every time he runs downfield, sees the ball in the air, and hears the defensive back laboring to catch up, whenever he feels that ball fall out of the sky and into his waiting hands, he inches closer to his goals. — Neil Hayes

I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A. — Kevin Dunn

When I went to college at the University of Nevada back in Las Vegas, I got tricked into singing in choir. The first thing we did was the Mozart 'Requiem.' That was the piece that changed my life overnight. — Eric Whitacre

In presidential campaign I released a 65-page file from the Syracuse University College of Law that showed poor grades, back in college, also. If I were plagiarizing consistently, my grades would have been better. — Joe Biden

I had come to expect that Chinese friends would make financial decisions that I found uncomfortably risky: launching businesses with their savings, moving across the country without the assurance of a job. One explanation, which Weber and Hsee call "the cushion hypothesis," is that traditionally large Chinese family networks afford people confidence that they can turn to others for help if their risk-taking does not succeed. Another theory is more specific to the boom years. "The economic reforms undertaken by Deng Xiaoping were a gamble in themselves," Ricardo Siu, a business professor at the University of Macau, told me. "So people got the idea that taking a risk is not just okay; it has utility." For those who have come from poverty to the middle class, he added, "the thinking may be, If I lose half my money, well, I've lived through that. I won't be poor again. And in several years I can earn it back. But if I win? I'm a millionaire! — Evan Osnos

I was 21 and had spent the last few years in Stanford University Engineering School at California. Many people advised me to take up a nice, cushy job rather than face the challenges of running a hydrogenated oil business. Looking back, I am glad I decided to take charge instead. Essentially leadership begins from within. It is a small voice that tells you where to go when you feel lost. If you believe in that voice, you believe in yourself. — Azim Premji

The University of Houston has made an excellent choice by hiring Ron Hughey as its new women's basketball coach. Coach Hughey will bring an expertise and energy level to the program that will excite fans and put Houston Women's Basketball back on the map. Having watched him coach up close, I know his players will improve immensely and love learning from him. I look forward to following Houston Basketball in the years to come. — Mike Thibault

Maybe I'll come back as somebody else.
I'll be the wild-haired girl Adam meets in his first week at university. 'Hi, are you on the horticultural
course as well? — Jenny Downham

When I was a young boy, I loved spending hours in St. Franics Xavier's school library at Saint Louis University. The feel of the books in my hands and the magical new worlds I discovered always drew me back to that fantastic place. Each time I visited, I could expect to find a new adventure and from time to time use my imagination to revisit my favorite place and enjoy Green Eggs and Ham in a house, with a mouse, on a train, on a plane, in a box, with a fox ... — William Lacy Clay Jr.

If I were to go back to the Philippines, I would probably end up teaching creative writing at a university. I wouldn't be able to write, for I would become too jaded to be able to view the existing situation objectively. — Miguel Syjuco

It's the typical mid-life crisis kind of thing, where you just stop and wonder, 'Should I go back to university and get a law degree?' I kind of looked around me and thought, 'What kind of idiot am I that I've just spent the last 10 years writing novels? Financially, I'm pretty much where I was when I was 28.' — Lynn Coady

He had hoped she would assume he had succumbed again to methamphetamine hydrochloride and was sparing her the agony of his descent back into the hell of chemical dependence. What it really was was that he had again decided those 50 grams of resin-soaked dope, which had been so potent that on the second day it had given him an anxiety attack so paralyzing that he had gone to the bathroom in a Tufts University commemorative ceramic stein to avoid leaving his bedroom, represented his very last debauch ever with dope, and that he had to cut himself off from all possible future sources of temptation and supply, — David Foster Wallace

No one should be held back from realising their potential by fears that they will not be able to afford to go to university or that they will graduate with unmanageable levels of debt. — Gordon Brown

When I came back from Munich, it was September, and I was Professor of Mathematics at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Later I learned that I had been the Department's third choice, after two numerical analysts had turned the invitation down; the decision to invite me had not been an easy one, on the one hand because I had not really studied mathematics, and on the other hand because of my sandals, my beard and my "arrogance" (whatever that may be). — Edsger Dijkstra

If I did want to go back to school, I'd want to go to Loyola Marymount University over in, I believe, Morina, or Pepperdine. Those are just beautiful campuses. I know that's probably not the right reason to go school. The campuses are just stunning. — Scott Michael Foster

My Greek Chorus takes a break when I meet with Mrs. Castor. I've never told her about them, or the fact that I converse with my sister's cat whenever I'm over there visiting. Probably a lot of things will remain a secret to Mrs. Castor. Some people might argue that going to see a counselor is a waste if I'm going to remain so guarded. But the appointments are only a ten dollar co-pay thanks to the university's generous nature and, unlike my chorus and the cat, she answers back independent of my brain cells and challenges my 'long held beliefs about the way people interact'. Or somethin — Barry Brennessel

Philip Marlowe, 38, a private licence operator of shady reputation, was apprehended by police last night while crawling through the Ballona Storm Drain with a grand piano on his back. Questioned at the University Heights Police Station, Marlowe declared he was taking the piano to the Maharajah of Coot-Berar. Asked why he was wearing spurs, Marlowe declared that a client's confidence was sacred. Marlowe is being held for investigation. Chief Hornside said police were not yet ready to say more. Asked if the piano was in tune, Chief Hornside declared that he had played the Minute Waltz on it in thirty-five seconds and so far as he could tell there were no strings in the piano. He intimated that someting else was. A complete statement to the press will be made within twelve hours, Chief Hornside said abruptly. Speculation is rife that Marlowe was attempting to dispose of a body. — Raymond Chandler

But what I didnt want to have happen, and I made this clear to Jeremy (Florida AD), if I am able to go coach, I want to coach at one place, the University of Florida. It would be a travesty, it would be ridiculous to all of a sudden come back and get the feeling back, get the health back, feel good again and then all of a sudden go throw some other colors on my shirt and go coach? I dont want to do that. I have too much love for this University and these players and for what weve built. — Urban Meyer