We live in Palo Alto, which has, fortunately, one of the greatest school districts in the country.
The myth of the peachfuzz billionaire has emerged. This new Horatio Alger typically launches his first start-up in middle school, and somewhere between the campus computer-science lab and a move to Palo Alto hacks up a Web site where users provide fun or useful content.
When I was in grade school and high school, I did a lot of chorale singing. And the chorus would be tenor, bass, and alto and soprano.
When I was in high school and college, I'd always been into websites, and when you'd read about sites and the companies and people behind them, they were always in Silicon Valley. This one's in Mountain View, this one's in Palo Alto. They're all right here. I knew I wanted to move out here, whether it was to work at Google or some other company.
Cal Poly is my kind of school. So many universities I visit boast about boring alumni like pioneering surgeons and Olympic athletes. But Cal Poly has none other than Weird Al Yankovic!
I've heard a number of our alumni - people who are running schools and school systems - think a lot about different models for the teaching profession.
Colleges prefer to enroll wealthy students because they know it's more likely that they'll pay for full tuition without needing financial aid. They're also more likely to have parents who will donate large sums of money to the school. When the privileged students graduate, they're expected to join the alumni association and also donate cash.
I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.
After I finished high school I went to Hong Kong and Thailand and spent some time there. Just to get that whole experience of being out of the bubble that I was in from high school in Vancouver, to be able to travel around and be on your own was an amazing experience.
I've lived an amazing life. There's no reason to focus on the bad. They teach you that in racing school. Keep your eye where you want your front tire to be. You don't want to be stuck in the rut? Then don't look at the rut. Always look at where you want to go.
When people ask where I studied to be an ambassador, I say my neighborhood and my school. I've tried to tell my kids that you don't wait until you're in high school or college to start dealing with problems of people being different. The younger you start, the better.
It's funny - in elementary school, I went by Amber. I never liked Tiffani.
I first decided to become an actor at school. A teacher gave us a play to do and that had a major impact. At first, I wanted to work in the theatre, but there was something about the ambience of film, especially American films, that always attracted me.
We weren't raised Muslim - we were born Muslim. I didn't go to a Muslim school, but it was just the theme song. It was ambient.
Oakland Technical High School. Like any high-school experience, it was ambiguous. I was shy with girls; I had friends, but there were times I didn't feel I had the right friends. My grades were only so-so.
I went to high school in Ellicott City, Maryland, and I felt pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. It just took time away from my doing things on the Internet - like creating clans in Quake II or starting a Web design nonprofit. In school, I was just a kid. Online, I had authority.
One of the things I learned in law school is that there's nothing wrong or undesirable or dishonorable or destructive about amending the Constitution.
Were I to be appointed Secretary of Education, I'd issue a prospectus for a compulsory nationwide high school course called 'The American Experience in Art.'
I was in sixth grade at Koko Head Elementary School in Honolulu, and was chosen to pin the 50th star on the American flag in front of my teachers and classmates at a special assembly to celebrate statehood.
I was a halfback on an American football team in Athens, Greece - the Kississia Colts - where I went to high school, and we took the Cup my senior year. The downside, and somewhat unfortunate piece of information I have to pass on, is there were only two teams in the league because of the limited amount of Americans.
