"Three hours make not an expert." Often when I am teaching a three hour or so class, I inform my students that three hours make not an expert. This means you will not learn everything you need to be an expert in a limited amount of time. You must spend quality time to become an expert. Having said that, I would also state that "my goal is not to make you an expert but only to inspire you to become one." William Arthur Ward once said, "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
Students often ask me what should they major in. I usually tell them, "You EXCEL your best, you DO your best, you PERFORM your best at what interests you the most."
"It's best to learn a few things than to listen to a lot and not know how to do much at all." When I first started teaching, I would give students many years of my experience in a three-day class. They would go away saying, "That guy really knows his stuff, but I could not do a thing he said." What I learned from that experience is that "people don't care how much you know, they want to know how much you care." And secondly, students would rather learn how to do a few good things than for me to teach them a whole lot and they don't know how to do anything at all proficiently.
"You don’t get it until you got it. Let me say that again because some of you did not get it. You got it." Many students think they have grasped a concept. However, once they attempt to apply it to a real-world situation it is not as straightforward as it seems. To really become proficient in a subject, you have to spend quality time with it until you know you got it. For example, sometimes I might spend a whole day attempting to resolve a programming problem. But once I "get" it resolved, I "got" it for life.
"Don’t build 90% bridges." I was working with a client who insisted that he could help build his web site so that he could save money. However, he got off to a good start several times but could not close the gap on how to complete the tasks at hand. I told him, "let me do the web site;" otherwise, he would consistently build these ninety percent bridges which he could never cross over to the other side, thereby making the task useless.
"It's not what you go through in life; it is HOW you HANDLE what you go through in life." I can give you two persons, place them in the same environment with everything being equal and one could COME UP on TOP, and the other one could GO DOWN in DEFEAT.
"When you MAKE it, stop FAKING it." Many of us have heard the adage, "Fake it until you can make it." While this is good, once you have made it, you should stop faking it and began to do the correct thing. For example, while using Wizards in most applications is good, there is no substitute for learning how to program by hand.
"Your vision should include your past, present, and future." The late Dr. Myle Monroe gives the best definition I have every heard of the word vision (My emphasis added). "Vision is FORESIGHT (what you see yourself doing in the FUTURE) with INSIGHT (what you enjoy doing now in the PRESENT) based on HINDSIGHT (What you enjoyed doing in the PAST)."