the.com/school of hard knocks
The only university that grants degrees in getting back up.
means Learning life's lessons through tough real-world experience and setbacks rather than classrooms or books.
from An American phrase dating to the early 1900s, built from 'knocks' meaning blows or misfortunes (a sense of 'knock' going back to the 1800s). 'School' here is used sarcastically — not a building with desks, but the rough instruction of poverty, failure, and struggle. The phrase spread through vaudeville, blues, and working-class slang, picturing hardship itself as the curriculum and survival as the diploma.
- tuition
- paid in failures, not dollars
- origin
- 1920s American slang for lived hardship
- diploma
- nobody frames it, everybody earns it
- curriculum
- no electives, everything is required