Amanda Beard Quotes

I went to school with butterflies of fear every day for years - from primary school onwards - not just worried about being bullied by classmates, but by teachers.

When I was a freshman at Yale, one teacher brought me up after class and said, 'You're trying to undermine my class.' And I thought to myself, 'Oh my God, I'm going to be kicked out of school on the first week.' Not only do I not have a sense of self, I don't even know what she's talking about. I don't even know how to undermine anything.

I was nearly as far behind in calculus as I was in physics. But I wasn't the only woman in the class, so I felt more comfortable asking questions.

I was an anxious kid. I worried about getting homework finished, even back when homework didn't count for anything.

I was probably more scared of my high school exams than I was of the Oscars. At the time you think it's everything and if you don't do well, your life's over. Opportunities are gone. So the more you do it, the less the fear is present.

I had to get good grades and do well in school - my mother was an assistant principal and my father was a teacher - and they took this very seriously.

If you're a kid, it's all you think about if you stutter. Kids can be so mean. My grades suffered. Class participation weighs heavy in grading, and I wouldn't open my mouth to read or talk in front of anyone.

I was terrified of taking the G.R.E.

Some of my academic friends think I've fallen from a very special grace.

The best schools tend to have the best teachers, not to mention parents who supervise homework, so there is less need for self-organised learning. But where a child comes from a less supportive home environment, where there are family tensions perhaps, their schoolwork can suffer. They need to be taught to think and study for themselves.

In order to be Miss Anybody you had to have excellent grades, and I had terrible grades because of my dyslexia.

I'll just say it: I'm not the sharpest tool in the box. Being forced to go back to school is still a fear of mine.

The idea of going back to college scares me, and I didn't even go. I went to college for one year, two semesters. If you add up the total time, I probably didn't even go one semester.

School was very difficult. I was conscious of how I looked.

I think there were so many times that I just felt so overwhelmed by school and by my relationships with my friends and I felt like I was going to be stuck in high school forever and I was never going to achieve my dreams.

My brother was the first to be home-schooled, and one reason they home-schooled me was so he wouldn't get jealous. Another thing is my mom noticed that I would stress out a lot about school. I would ask my teacher how good my grades were and think about that all the time.

Well, maybe it was just that I wasn't going to like anybody because I had to work and I had to explain to my teachers why I wasn't keeping up. I'd fall asleep and things in class and they'd lecture me about the reality of their classroom. I said, 'You want to see my reality?' I opened up my backpack to where you usually keep your pencils. That's where I kept my bills... electric bills, rent... That was my reality.

When I was about 7 years old, I had been labeled dyslexic. I'd try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I'd get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I'd read. I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb. I would get angry. My legs would actually hurt when I was studying. My head ached. All through school and well into my career, I felt like I had a secret. When I'd go to a new school, I wouldn't want the other kids to know about my learning disability, but then I'd be sent off to remedial reading.

I had my own insecurities, which a lot of my comedy would come from, about not being able to live up to their academic expectations. Acting out those insecurities was a way of confronting them, like, “Let me just lean into being a guy who can’t read or write.”

I was sitting in the classroom trying to look intelligent in case the teacher looked at me.

When I miss class for one day, I know it. When I miss class for two days, my teacher knows it. When I miss class for three days, the audience knows it.

What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare.

I suppose fear is like a drug. A little bit isn't that bad, but you can get addicted to the consumption and distribution of it.

I have a fear of failure.

I may have made a straight A in physics, but I was panic-struck. Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it.