Recently I’ve discovered audio books on YouTube by Malcolm Gladwell, specifically Talking to Strangers and Outliers. I really enjoyed the books and Gladwell’s different perspective and felt like I learned some things, but I had not been familiar with his writing before the algorithm brought his books to me.  It matters to me who I am listening to, so I looked up Gladwell’s reputation … on Twitter. Not surprisingly, there was a spectrum of opinions stretching all the way from “brilliant” to “idiotic”.  This disturbed me. I don’t want to waste time listening to an idiot.  One tweet linked to…

 After carefully observing the media over recent years, I am currently experiencing a crisis of confidence when it comes to national news. I really don’t know who to trust anymore.  I used to simply believe the things I would read in a newspaper or see on the evening news. Now, my typical reaction to a news report – any report from any news outlet – is the following: “I wonder how much of that is true”. This thought is quickly followed by “I doubt I will ever know for sure”.  Now I don’t even trust my own judgment about how…

I bet the college students are getting pretty irritated. They have every right to be.  For almost a year now they’ve been alternately shamed and flattered and scared into strict compliance with all the Covid19 protocols. New rules and restrictions pop up frequently but rarely get retracted. They’re paying full price for college and getting only the downside (unimaginative lectures online and bad cafeteria food which they are supposed to take back to their cramped dorm rooms to eat) and precious little of the upside that constitutes the real heart of the college experience (late night socializing, sports events, socials,…

Late last night I published a post that I woke up this morning feeling uncomfortable about. So I unpublished it.  I have occasionally found myself composing a difficult and emotionally charged email and then soon regretting having hit “send”. So I have learned to allow a charged email to sit tight as a draft for at least 24 hours before launch. Sometimes after 24 hours such an email gets a major revision, sometimes it gets replaced by a face-to-face meeting, and sometimes it just gets deleted altogether.  Last night I allowed my self-imposed ‘blogging-daily’ deadline to overrule my gut telling…

I used to absolutely love the “memories” function but now it is why I am keeping my distance from Facebook these days. Seven incredible years with hundreds of incredible people have left behind too many incredible memories. And they are just too fresh to be anything but painful currently. I know that somewhere down the line they will be happy reminders once again, but for now I just can’t bear to look at them. I guess I am feeling a little down about being away from Haiti tonight. These feelings – regret, anger, disbelief – come and go, but generally…

I am trying to be patient with all my students. They are a wonderful bunch of individuals. So much personality. And, in fact, the majority do not test my patience. But in my afternoon classes in particular, there is a predictable handful of students who tend to blurt things out, either over the top of whatever I am saying at the moment or in the midst of a hard-won quiet of “you’ve got time to work in class”. And they blurt everything from correct answers to my questions (“IRONY!”) to the obvious and mundane (“I DROPPED MY PENCIL!”) to unclever…

I am trying to be patient with all my students. They are a wonderful bunch of individuals. So much personality. And, in fact, the majority do not test my patience. But in my afternoon classes in particular, there is a predictable handful of students who tend to blurt things out, either over the top of whatever I am saying at the moment or in the midst of a hard-won quiet of “you’ve got time to work in class”. And they blurt everything from correct answers to my questions (“IRONY!”) to the obvious and mundane (“I DROPPED MY PENCIL!”) to unclever…

 I came across the Canadian hockey players’ birthday illustration (in yesterday’s post) in a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers, the Story of Success.  To recap: 40% of Canadian hockey players have birthdays in January, February or March and only 10% have birthdays in October, November or December. This is the result of the young hockey hopefuls playing on teams organized by birth year. Those born early in the year have a size, speed, and coordination advantage over their younger teammates born months later. Gladwell explains that those early advantages – based only on chance of birth – slowly snowball…