“Is this on the exam?” “Sort of.” I’d just shown my students how to use trigonometric substitution to simplify the process of integrating functions involving radicals. If esoteric integration techniques aren’t your thing, what you need to know is that there are many of them. […]
Year: 2021
Multiply Yourself
As I wrapped up my undergraduate degree, I decided to stick around for a masters. Why? I met someone, and she wouldn’t be graduating for a couple more years. Get a masters, graduate at the same time, happily ever after. The plan changed, but the […]
Integrity as a Learning Objective
It’s that time of year, writing course syllabi and deciding on the policies that we’ll be living with for the next 15 weeks! One component that always causes me to stop and think is the “Academic Integrity” section of my syllabus. Cheating is more common […]
Playing the Game
There are different types of games. The simplest ones are what we call zero-sum games. In order for one player to score a point, the other players lose the opportunity to score. I’m reminded of a game I used to play as a child called […]
When to Give Up
You’re going to spend your time doing something. Your money is going to get spent on something. Your effort and passion will be spent. These things aren’t to save, they are to spend. But on what? The more I experience, the more I realize the […]
Self Acceptance
I’ve seen a lot of posts on social media lately talking about self acceptance. Buried in flowery language they all say something like: Forgive yourself for the past. Accept yourself as you are in the present. Become who you need to be in order to […]
Is Abandoning Your Goals the Secret to Success?
“Goal setting” has become one of those Insta-famous ideas that successful looking people send post after post for us to see. “You just have to set an intention,” “I made a list of goals and then got to work, and now I have a luxury […]
Ready. Fire. Aim.
Oooof late start today for me because my kids are sick (just the normal stuff). On days like this it can be easy to be stressed because I lost an hour of work, and I HAVE to be ready for class at 11:30, 2:30, 4:00, […]
Is that the best you can do?
One of the biggest challenges with negotiating is that we’re usually doing it on our own behalf. We’re not only close to the action, we’re highly invested in the result. Take, for instance, negotiating your compensation for a new job. A 10% difference in your […]
Cleaning Out the Closet
It’s truly amazing to consider the last year. The world was so uncertain, and fighting to maintain our connections to one another was one of the things that gave my early days of isolation purpose and direction. Now we see a light at the end […]
