My own ambitions were eclectic. My father ran a steel plant, and I was expected to study metallurgy and end up at the steel plant when I finished high school at age 15. Despite my proficiency at science, I decided against it and instead went on to study filmmaking.
When I came back to Mumbai after boarding school, I was 16 and I picked up weight training and yoga. This is when I also started dance classes and Pilates and then I started doing different workouts every month. I am now proficient in kick boxing, gymnastics, classical dance as well as yoga.
Short of finding a place on the witness protection programme, you don't get many opportunities to completely reinvent your life. Going to university changes that. Away from home, away from parents, away from anyone who remembers you from school, you can pretend to be far cooler and more experienced than you are.
History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.
When you're young, you think that clothes are almost magical, and that if you wear the right thing - to school, to the prom, on the date, etc. - something's going to happen. Black, it's the anti-magical thing. It comes from the recognition that it is not going to be 'the' dress.
Well, first of all, I grew up in New York City, going to first a public school, then a private school, and when I got to the private school in Manhattan, I learned of what we called 'The Promised Land,' which are the Hamptons. I've always had an affinity for the Hamptons.
Things began to improve when I went to Rangoon. To begin with, my father was promoted, which meant he was at home more. The matriarchal society was ended, and for the first time, I went to a boys' school.
If anything, we hope that DonorsChoose.org is going to be a prompt, a nudge in the side of the public school system to improve and to start delivering these materials and experiences that students need and to make it easier for teachers to innovate.
In school, nobody could pronounce my name. They just called me Rocky.
At age 11, I went to a Jewish school. I speak Yiddish. I'm Church of England Protestant. My father was Catholic, and my mother was Protestant. My wife is a Muslim.
My mother was an elementary school teacher for 35 years and taught at the Nixon School in New Jersey. I was raised as a very liberal Democrat, and she was protesting Nixon when he was in office.
My proudest moment was probably when my oldest boy finished law school and went on to become an FBI agent. It was just beyond my imagination that - with my background - my own son would become an FBI agent.
If a parent chooses to go to a school that is not a public school, then that is a decision made and a contract made with that provider.
I was heavily into sport from 10 to 15, I was in all the teams, and it was everything to me. But I was very young for my school year and when puberty kicked in for my classmates I got left behind.
In undergraduate school, I chose a career path that always leads to certain unemployment: I majored in politics and public affairs with a double-minor in philosophy and history.
But first I want to get my master's degree at Columbia's School of International Public Affairs.
I started school in public housing. My dad had a sixth-grade education.
The transitional period is tough. You can find yourself too old to play high school roles but too young to play the leading man. You have to be quite smart about how you present yourself. Your public image reflects your range.
I'm a journalist, so my friends are journalists: magazines, newspapers, even public radio. Nobody had their kids in public school.
I wanted to go to school for public relations, and I also wanted to minor in dance. And Hofstra had two really good programs for both of those, so that's why I ended up there.
