Choosing Celebration Instead of Regret
In Buddhism, desire is thought to be the cause of all suffering. One extremely common kind of desire is regret: the wish for that which is contrary to reality. You…
Building Better Behavior
A college student who was finishing an elective course in philosophy wrote a letter to her professor, giving it to him as she left class on the last day. In…
Rewiring Circuits in My Super Secret Laboratory
When we feel like someone is trolling us, pushing our buttons, or getting under our skin, we generally stop responding and start reacting. When that happens, we have let go…
I Need a Hand…and Your Eyes
A professor friend used to explain the idea of chi to his Oriental philosophy students in this way: There is the path and there is the ditch.If you’re not on…
Avoiding Deadlines
Deadline is an interesting word. It was created during the American Civil War by the horrifically cruel Confederate Army officer Heinrich Hartmann Wirz, who ran the prison in Andersonville, Georgia.…
What Would Future Me Do?
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If so, then the cement between those paving stones is the tired disappointment we feel with ourselves when we…
A College Degree is Literally a Matter of Life and Death
This post, the first in a series, focuses on the paper Life expectancy in adulthood is falling for those without a BA degree, but as educational gaps have widened, racial…
Confronting Expectations in the Classroom
Students tend to like everything neatly laid out; they want to know exactly where they are; they don’t welcome the introduction of multiple perspectives, especially when no master perspective reconciles…
Performance: Getting Past Belief to Reality
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is generally defined as a cognitive bias in which individuals incorrectly OVERESTIMATE their abilities or knowledge in a specific area. A typical example is if we take…
How High Can You Jump?
Between two stints in college, I went to business school. The counselor there looked at my records and said, ‘Well. I guess you can do just about anything you want…