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The Invisible Influence of Cell Phones
Cell phones are so convenient that they’re inconvenient. — Haruki Murakami If you were being mugged and had to give up either your wallet or your cell phone, which would you choose? In formulating your own answer, you probably tried to determine which of those two items was more replaceable (or rather, why the mugger was only asking for one of them…). For many people, their phone has become more indispensable than the...
Are You An Imposter?
It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other. — Emile M. Cioran It’s no fun feeling like a phony. In fact, for my first semester in graduate school, I was certain a mistake had been made. Everyone was extremely smarter than me; it took forever to get through my homework; reading scientific articles was like deciphering a cookbook (I’m not good at cooking). But after four years in the program—after getting my...
The Let-Down Effect
There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness it is to be expecting evil before it arrives! — Lucius Annaeus Seneca With the final days of the 2016-2017 school year, I found myself in perilous straits: manuscripts to finish, final talks to give, papers and exams to grade, this whole “sleep” thing to do. But through those two weeks of high stress, my immune system and body were functioning at...
Bored? Not Anymore
When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting. – Jon Kabat-Zinn Recently, I’ve noticed a trend among the younger generation: fewer and fewer people have hobbies. But when you consider the time we live in, it makes sense. With Netflix, Facebook, the whole dang Internet at your fingertips, why would anyone growing up today want to collect stamps? Hobbies resulted from not having anything to do, but with the whole...
Beat Back the Blues
You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. — Buddha We all feel sad now and again, caught in those funks we wish we could Rip Van Winkle ourselves out of. But when a good night’s rest and some exercise doesn’t fix the issue, that depression can make even the far-forever future seem trapped in the present gloom. For most people, however, we only feel depressed rather than have...