Just like a boxer can’t win without a few punches on his face, a student can’t be fully trained without ups and downs.

...he had also acquired a peculiar academic quirk. During exams, he knew all the answers but wasn’t able to successfully map his answers to the right questions. So as soon as an exam started, he simply started putting his answers in the order in which he remembered them. Every time he moved to a new class, his parents made the new teachers aware of this snag. The teachers acknowledged it and reassured the parents that they’d match his answers against the appropriate questions.

What a silly thing love is!' said the student as he walked away. 'It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to philosophy and study metaphysics.'
So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.

Teachers loved to say people had potential; that's what teachers did to keep themselves from getting canned. What were they supposed to say-I'm sorry, your kid has no promise whatsoever? She's utterly mediocre in every way?

One of the biggest disadvantages of being grown up is seeing the time rush by faster.

Ahh, love, why is it so easy to let you in, but so difficult to let you out? Why couldn’t you subsist only two-sided?