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Marc Hoberman from GradeSuccess.com, author of the book Search and Seizure:\xa0Overcoming Illness and Adversity, tells us how to reconcile both our positive and negative life experiences. He didn't let his eppilepsy diagnosis define him, and instead used this experience to keep him grounded. Marc shares his breakthroughs he experienced with his struggle, as well as how he makes money online with SAT prep and online tutoring.\n\nDisplay TranscriptRobert Plank: Today's guest is Marc Hoberman. He's a test prep expert and teen illness survivor, and he's going to be talking to us about teen illness, education, SAT prep, dealing with stress, speed reading and study skills, creating success in school and a whole lot more. How are things today, Mr. Marc?\n\nMarc Hoberman: Doing very well, thank you. I appreciate it.\n\nRobert Plank: Cool. No problem. I'm glad that you're here, so could you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do, and what makes you unique and special?\n\nMarc Hoberman: I've been a teacher for 33 years, and I've had a tutoring business for about 25. I do a lot of tutoring in person and online. I have tutors who work for me. We do a lot of educational consulting for parents as well, for kids who are stressed out over school, and things of that nature. I've been in the camp training industry for many years, so I deal with a lot of children different ages, teens also. Because of an illness I had as a child. As a teen at the age of about 17, I was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 17 after having a seizure, grand mal seizure unfortunately, behind the wheel of a car, I wrote my book, "Search and Seizure, Overcoming Illness and Adversity".\n\nRobert Plank: It sounds like because you've gone through it, you have these messages to help other people, too.\n\nMarc Hoberman: That's exactly right. I started the book a while ago and stopped it. Then, about three years ago, my son came down with irritable bowel syndrome, IBS. That and a couple of skin issues, and he started getting a little depressed. I was very methodical about looking into it and fixing it, and finding him the right people. My wife said, "How come you're handling this so well? I'm a wreck." And I said, "You know, I think it's because I went through it, and I realized as a teacher, I could certainly help other people." A lot of times the emotionality of the illness is worse than the physicality of the illness.\n\nRobert Plank: Interesting. As far as these illnesses and these things that hit us, is there a catchall or a one-size-fits-all, or a thing that we should all do no matter what hits us, or is it more of a case by case basis?\n\nMarc Hoberman: It's a little of both. My big mantra in the book is I didn't let my illness define me. I defined it. I else didn't become who I am in spite of my illness, I am who I am because of my illness. You really want to embrace illness, stress, anything that you have, and deal with it that way instead of fighting it in other ways.\n\nRobert Plank: As far as like what happened to you and what happened to your son, what happens to the people that you help out, do you look at it in terms of whatever gets in the way, is this something to be minimized, or do we roll with the punches? What happened with you from when you first came across this epilepsy thing into what happened now. what kind of breakthroughs and obstacles did you go through for that?\n\nMarc Hoberman: Minimizing it, absolutely not. My hope is that in dealing with it a certain way, it minimizes itself on its own. Certainly not to minimize it, for the person to minimize it. To be honest, I'm 54 years old and until I wrote the book, there weren't 10 people in the world who knew I had epilepsy. I had family members who called in were shocked that I had this. There's a stigma attached to it, I was embarrassed, I did lose some friends, not a lot luckily, but there was so much more involved with it than just the illness.\n\nI guess the turnaround was when I did open up about it,