Quotes from Alexandra Robbins

The 1970s, fewer than 25% of US residents lived in counties in which the presidential candidate won by landslide. 30 years later, that percentage has nearly doubled.

My heart broke not only for the daughter who already was forced to become her mother's alarmingly narrow ideal, but also for the middle daughter who knew that her in mother's mind she had already failed.

You need to add a new voice inside your head, one that says, "So what?" What if you don't get married by 30? So what? What if you haven't paid off your loans or debt by 35? So what? What if you're not a stand-out success by 28? So what? If you were to achieve everything you wanted in life by the age of 30, then what would you do for the next fifty years? You have time. You don't have to get to everything right now.

Membership in small groups allows people to feel similar and different at the same time: similar because they are a part of a group in different because the group is separate from the masses.

He comes in entirely as an outsider. He lets his mind wander. He's not endangering his academic position because he doesn't have one, and he can take those risks

There might be some residue in my mouth, but if I can breathe from my nasal passage, the air won't come from my mouth or my diaphragm.

QUIRK THEORY: Many of the differences that cause a student to be excluded in school are the same traits or real-world skills that others will value, love, respect, or find compelling about that person in adulthood and outside of the school setting.

In high school, Jake and Arjun had been straight A students who were heavily involved in school activities and did not party.

Nursing is more than a career; it is a calling. Nurses are remarkable. Yet contemporary literature largely neglects them.

Arjun came from a staid Pakistani family that prioritized academics and shunned alcohol. When he had moved into his dorm last week, his parents asked Jake, whom they knew was not a drinker, to watch over their son.

But how do you police friends who do not want to be policed? Already, Jake could sense the dynamics changing among his high school friends. Last week, his classmates had partied out of control.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, male nurses ride the "glass escalator"; although they are in the minority, they receive higher wages and faster promotions than women in the same jobs.

In 1984, when the legal drinking age was raised to 21, underage students moved their partying from bars to private houses, which changed the Greek experience profoundly. Now fraternities had disproportionate control over the college party scene, they played an even more dominate role on campus. By the early, 1990s, 86 percent of fraternity brothers were binge drinking.

In the minds of their peers, too often students become caricatures of themselves.

Gaming was one of the only times when you only have to focus on one thing. But even more than that, It's like an anchor. As long as I know it's there, it's part of me. It's some form of continuity that in my life I desperately need.

wish I could start a revolution for ER nurses specifically; we are the rock stars of nursing, but are treated like the red-headed bastard stepchild." —a North Carolina ER nurse

He could be disciplined when he wanted to be.

Simpson calculated that if an inpatient nurse sees an average of even just four patients during a twelve-hour shift, in twenty years she will care for more than 11,000 patients and families. A clinic nurse who sees ten patients per shift will care for nearly 43,000 patients.

Part of the problem is that people at our school don't listen. They just put on the headphones and tune out the world. It's intimidating.

Molly had no desire to be a floor nurse. At every hospital where she had worked, there was a rivalry between the ER and the other nursing departments. "We think they're lazy and they think we're bitches," Molly said. One of the most frequent complaints ER nurses had against floor nurses was that floor nurses tried to avoid getting new patients as shift change approached.

He didn't realize that simply by mingling among various lunch tables, he was befriending people in different crowds, weaving together the fringes of the cafeteria.

I love the free entertainment that patients provide. People say and do the most ridiculous things, and I've got a front row seat to the absurdity." —A Colorado travel nurse

nursing was a deeply interpersonal profession in which people had to depend on others—doctors, techs, fellow nurses—to do their job well.

Unshackled by strict yet arbitrary, misguided norms, outcasts can be, look, act, and associate however they want. And in this ever conformist, cookie-cutter, magazine-celebrity-worshipping, creativity-stifling society, the innovation, courage, and differences of the cafeteria fringe are vital to America's culture and progress. Which is why we must celebrate them.