The Student's Advantage: Your Guide to Getting the Most out of School and Creating a Fabulous Future

By Wyne Ince

Hello,

Finally, every student has access to the advantages needed to succeed in school and in life! This timely, student-friendly guide will show you--or your son or daughter--the value of education as well as their importance to the process and to the world.

Do you--or does your child:
Struggle in school or maybe just get by in school?
Have trouble getting motivated or find it difficult to care?
Have doubts about your (or his or her) ability to succeed?
Feel clueless about choosing a career?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you need this book!

Written by a teacher who understands the challenges of getting an education, The Student's Advantage: Your Guide to Getting the Most Out of School and Creating a Fabulous Future! examines the problems students grapple with in school, provides concrete solutions, and opens the doors to your personal and academic achievement.

What you will learn from this book: If you're tired of just putting in time, if you want to be someone you and your family can be proud of, if you don't know how to get out of the rut but sincerely want to, this book provides the stepping stones that lead out of the woods of mediocrity and into the daylight of brilliant success. Full of practical tools for becoming a stellar student and for choosing a fun, fulfilling, yet profitable career, The Student's Advantage is your personal guide to the life and future you desire.

All too often, students do not really understand why they need to learn. With US academic performance in decline, particularly in science and math, the time has come to tackle the question of why students are not doing better, and to emphasize to students the "why" of learning, making clear to them how education will affect their adult lives.

This book is a practical guide that will motivate middle and high school students by providing a vital understanding of the keys to succeeding during formal education, the importance of investigating potential career interests, and the need to take an active role in preparing for the years ahead.

Now is the time to change your life for the better. This book is your start.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wyne Ince
• Release date: Nov 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463021811

Wyne Ince

Wyne Ince doesn't consider himself a theologian, preacher, or even formally trained in delivering God's instructions. However, he believes that developing and maintaining a timely relationship with Jesus is the wisest engagement of a lifetime. Logically, Ince concludes that since God owns everything, humans can own nothing, so, as intelligent beings, why go to Hell for nothing? He also reckons that God loves everyone, including those in Hell. Therefore, we escape eternal destruction with God’s help but also with our involvement.He received his Bachelor of Computer Information Systems degree from the City University of New York (CUNY). He then pursued his Master of Telecommunication and Information Management degree from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU). He has been a follower of Jesus Christ for many years. To remain persistent and focused on the narrow road, he regularly practices praising, praying, fasting, and what is pleasing in the eyes of God.

Book preview

Introduction

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance, quips educator and attorney Derek Bok. And he’s right. There’s no limit to what ignorance can cost you. It can even cost you your life.

Education can be achieved through different means, and observing a task is one of them. But most people learn through words. Enter any classroom or library, and you’ll see in a flash that words – both written and spoken — knit together everything that is learned there.

When you interact with people – your friends, siblings, parents, and teachers – you use words to convey your thoughts and intentions. Words are an essential part of communicating and learning almost anything.

Words often come in the form of advice. Some of it is good, some not so good, and some advice is just plain bad. Good advice is an essential part of getting a good education. It can help you decide how far to go in school, how hard to study, what subjects to study, and what career is best for you.

The voice of experience is invaluable.

That’s the kind of advice you will find in this book. But what about the other advice you’re offered – the things your friends and parents and teachers tell you? Let’s talk about that for a moment.

Friends can give good advice, but sometimes they give bad advice because they know less than you do and they are shooting in the dark. They give you answers they think and hope are true. There will be other times, though, when people who you think are your friends will give you bad advice on purpose. This happens when they feel bad about themselves and want to see you fail. They think that if they see you miserable, they will feel less miserable themselves.

I made some mistakes in my youth because I believed my friends knew better than my parents and teachers did. I saw the adults as old-fashioned and out of touch, and I thought they wanted to stop me from having fun. I felt they were way too cautious. I was sure my peers were much more aware than the grownups, and I believed whatever they told me.

I realized years later that the adults in my life cared more about me than my friends did, and they had more life experience and wisdom to speak from. If I had listened to the grownups a little more, I would have avoided some blunders that cost me quite a bit at the time. Some of these blunders scarred my life permanently. Be careful who you listen to, who you regard as wise.

Most teen movies and books these days portray grownups – particularly parents – as stupid or just plain mean. It makes kids feel cool and powerful when they look at adults that way, with ridicule in their hearts. But when you behave this way, you hurt only yourself, not the grownups. You cut yourself off from the insights they’ve gained from having lived longer than you and from having experienced more.

Listen to people who obviously have an interest in your educational and personal well-being. Except in rare cases of abuse, parents love their kids and do their best to support their success. Because adults can make mistakes too, you want to make your own decisions in the end. Just don’t write your parents off as having nothing to say that’s of consequence.

The same goes for teachers. It’s their job to give you knowledge and offer good advice. It’s smart to pay attention to their opinions and suggestions.

Throughout this guide, I will offer insights and tips that, when combined with those of your parents and teachers, can set you on the road to life success. Shall we get started?

I

Getting Started

The journey to becoming a graduate begins with the motivation to make it to the graduation ceremony.

1

Why Education Counts

Education is the movement from darkness to light. — Allan Bloom

I would like

to share a true story with you. Liz Murray was born in the Bronx, New York. She had a rough childhood. Both her parents were drug addicts. From a very early age, she and her sister had to take care of themselves. The girls were not even able to go to elementary school.

When Liz was just eleven, she found out her mom was HIV-positive. Her family fell apart, and her parents divorced. Liz did not want to leave her father, so she took care of him because he was sick, too. After a while she left home and stayed with friends, sleeping on their couches, even sometimes having to sleep out on the streets.

Her mother and father ended up passing away. Liz knew she did not want to live the way they had and decided to go back to high school. She did not have a home and was forced to study at friends’ houses or while riding on the commuter train.

One day her high school class took a trip to Harvard – one of the most respected universities in the world. Something in her mind clicked. She knew if she could get a college education, her entire world would change. She saw how happy everyone was on campus, and it looked like fun. Even though she was a homeless kid from the streets, she believed she could do it. On that day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Liz discovered the value of education.

She committed herself to her studies and won a scholarship to Harvard. She graduated from there in 2009 and now runs her own company. Several movies have been made about her, and she has written Breaking Night, a book about her life. Liz discovered the secret to escaping poverty and having a hard life: education. Now she has a great life and is very happy. She could not have done it without continuing her education after high school.

College is so much more than sitting in classrooms for another four years. It’s a lot of fun, you meet great people, and you learn a great deal that will help you all your life. For many young people, college leads to a happier, more fulfilling life in every way. A recent study done by The College Board showed that people who graduate from college are healthier, live longer, and are more fulfilled than people who do not continue their education after high school.

The study showed that people who do not have college degrees are twice as likely to do drugs, go to prison, be jobless, and live in poverty-level housing. The same study showed that most college grads make a lot more money in their lives than other people do. People who can earn only low incomes struggle to pay their bills all the days of their lives. They may never be able to buy a home or have nice things. They work in jobs they do not like and don’t have enough money when they’re older for retirement.

It used to be when your parents were growing up that you could still get a good job without getting an education beyond high school. Those jobs are not around anymore. Now the good jobs are reserved for people with either a college degree or with excellent vocational training. (A vocation means a trade, like electrical work, carpentry, plumbing, car repair, nursing, or cooking.)

I know it sounds depressing, but you need to know the truth. Now let’s look at some good news. People who have a bachelor’s degree, which means only four more years after high school, earn twice as much as the average high school graduate! That means you’ll be able to live a life of comfort, have your own home, buy nice things, and work at a job that brings you satisfaction and respect.

People with a master’s degree, which takes one or two years of schooling beyond a bachelor’s, earn even more. They make an average yearly wage of $67,300. People who have a professional degree like a doctor or a lawyer make over $100,000 a year.

Perhaps you never considered going to college because your parents never did, or because you think you could never afford it. Liz Murray didn’t have the money either, and her parents weren’t there to teach her about the importance of continuing her education, but she did it anyway.

Just because your parents didn’t go to college does not mean you shouldn’t or can’t. There are financial aid programs that give students just like you money for school. What I’m trying to say is that if you want to go to college or get vocational training to develop a talent you have, the money and all the tools you need are there for you. You have only to grab hold of them. But you have to become a good student in order to do that. This book will show you how.

You deserve to know the truth about what an education can do for your life and the consequences of not having an education. There are people all over the city where you live who wish someone would have told