But in Friday's early hours, a fast-moving fire ravaged the top two floors of the historic main building at the private art, design and architecture college in Brooklyn, destroying dozens of art studios and the precious student works they contained.
In fact, since adults are likely to supervise this development, it would save precious student time, time perhaps better devoted to numeracy and literacy, if the universities invited parents to submit the resulting creations to Ucas under their own names, with the child merely confirming it is the adult's own, unaided work.
You can cobble together a decent dinner using only your rice cooker, and it helps stretch precious student funds.
More and more, schools are starting to ban bottled water sales in favor of bottle refilling stations, in an effort to save the environment and precious student dollars.
It happens every day, but when finals roll around and cramming begins, falling victim to the siren song of a Wikipedia wormhole can eat up precious time students need to study facts, figures, equations and all that.
Here's more: "The tale introduces Li Li Stormstout, a precious young student who lives atop a giant turtle called Shen-zin Su".
And once we lose our credibility, then we lose our most precious gifts, our students.
Former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein recently compared teacher pensions to a Ponzi scheme, siphoning precious money from students.
Of course, each class holds those precious few diligent students who never miss a day or an assignment, offer thoughtful commentary, provoke involved classroom discussions, and turn in beautifully-composed essays.
As the 45th U.S. President is sworn in and a new Congress convenes, I urge us all, in the spirit of common commitment to our most precious asset, our students, to make certain that we keep the importance of healthy, high-achieving futures for all American children -- and the prosperous, stable economy that a healthy generation of young people helps to produce -- top of mind.
Jack's aunt ran a private school where Precious was a student.
