Rob Parsons
speaker
553 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 26 Apr
Rob Parsons’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
He thought he was just writing with ink on paper, but he wasn't.
He made for me a little wooden box called academic achievement.
And the bottom was rubbish and the side was no hope and the top was no ability.
And because he was a teacher and I was a kid, I climbed in that box and I lived there.
This is where I belonged.
I had just come 34th out of 34 in my class.
And I remember that just two names left.
I used to read them out, John, beginning with the top.
It was a system designed to both honor and humiliate.
And we're down to the last two names.
I look across at Bernard Harris and Bernard looks at me and Bernard shrugs his shoulders.
And then I hear Bernard's name.
And 33 sets of eyes turn to look at the stupidest kid in the class.
And I lived in that box for years, but we're not meant to live in the boxes other people make for us, and we're not meant to make boxes for other people.
So I am both happy, I've had an incredible life, and a little bit angry, to be honest, at the messages we sometimes give each other.
You know, it's remarkable how things happen.
I think if we've known a measure of success in life, we kind of think we're pretty good.
The truth is most of us have had a couple of breaks.
We've met people who've changed our lives.
And so I'm 15, 16.
Showing 161–180 of 553 · page 9 of 28
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