Motivation and the Future

1. "You make us do too much."
2. Motivation?
3. Two Consequences of "Winner Take All" Societies

Two Consequences of "Winner Take All" Societies

Tim Harford — Article — The lost leisure time of our lives

"The economic elites, meanwhile, continue to embody a paradox: all the income gains that Keynes expected and more, but limited leisure. 

The likely reason for that is that, in many careers, it’s hard to break through to the top echelons without putting in long hours. It is not easy to make it to the C-suite on a 20-hour week, no matter how talented one is. And because the income distribution is highly skewed, the stakes are high: working 70 hours a week like it’s 1830 all over again may put you on track for a six-figure bonus, while working 35 hours a week may put you on track for the scrapheap. 

The consequences of all this can emerge in unexpected places. As a recent research paper by economists Lena Edlund, Cecilia Machado and Maria Micaela Sviatschi points out, urban centres in the US were undesirable places to live in the late 1970s and early 1980s. People paid a premium to live in the suburbs and commuted in to the city centres to work. The situation is now reversed. Why? The answer, suggest Edlund and her colleagues, is that affluent people don’t have time to commute any more. They’ll pay more for cramped city-centre apartments if by doing so they can save time."

The above (long) quote is yet another piece of evidence in regards to the direction the world seems to be headed. That is a direction that rewards people at the very edge of their fields in ever smaller numbers, while the rest are automated, outsourced, or otherwise paid very minimal wages due to replaceability.

I see this as having two immediate consequences that all (young) people should be aware of.

First, recognizing that innovation and knowledge creation are likely to continue to garner the highest rewards makes understanding creativity, mastery, and expertise that much more important. If you can't get to the edge of the field through massive time and energy investments in gaining expertise, you will probably be one of the people automated, outsourced, or paid minimally. This is important to know. Choose appropriately how you spend your time and energy.

Second, deciding on what kind of society we should have becomes vastly more critical. If the majority of financial rewards will go to a smaller and smaller percentage of working people, while the majority of working people continue to earn relatively less over time, then creating societal norms around giving back and taking care of the less privileged becomes even more important.

It's a statistical fact that not everyone will be in the one percent regarding intelligence, physical prowess, creativity, or ability to persist on difficult work for decades at a time. For people not born with these outlier abilities through no fault of their own, it seems only right to care for them as a society. After all, it is society that allows the outliers to prosper in the first place, therefore, society should be entitled to many of those rewards.

This makes education aimed at caring, compassion, and inclusivity that results in citizens willing to engage and vote in elections to the benefit of all one of the most pressing issues of our time.

“How to” succeed on IB Economics higher level paper 3 | Economics in Plain English

“How to” succeed on IB Economics higher level paper 3 | Economics in Plain English

The link above takes you to Jason Welker's website that details a post on exactly what you can expect from a paper 3 exam in May. It's quite long. It's quite numerical. But at this point in time, you should be expecting that.

Paper 3 has the highest average score around the world, but involves calculations from across the entire two year  course and all sections of the syllabus. Therefore, it doesn't allow you to focus on just micro or just development.

This might seem a bit overwhelming at first, but you should recognize that many of the formulas are recycled with different names for different situations. For example, line equations are used multiple times and percentage change equations are used multiple times.

The more energy you spend working through the exercises in the book and reviewing the above link now, the easier the exam will be. This is definitely a test where practice and exposure is almost certainly your best bet. Do all the work, ask questions if you get stuck, and you should be as prepared as you possibly can be.

I would also personally take the time to write out all the formulas from across the text so that you can organize them mentally in the way that best works for you. This could be a Google Doc, flashcards, or even taking a list you find from the internet from the many examples that already exist. The point is to keep it handy over the next month, look at it a lot, and do your best to memorize them so you don't have to rely on filling in too many gaps on test day. It simply speeds up your problem solving if the formulas are already automatic and lets you spend time where it counts the most.

Grade 12 Reminders

Reminders

1. Last day to submit the IA portfolio is March 21st
2. Paper 3 HL exam on March 24th
3. Mock exams are the March 31st
1. This means finishing chapter 29 for SL students
2. All chapters, including 7-10 should be complete for HL students

To do

1. Open a new blog post.
2. Answer the following questions:
1. Do you understand what your current IB grade is?
2. What do you currently feel least prepared to perform well on in the coming exams?
3. Do you understand what sections of the course your lowest marks have come from over the past year and a half?
3. Write up a schedule for the next four weeks until the mocks.
1. Include dates for any remaining chapter assessments and the IA.
2. Include how you will improve in your weakest areas from number 2 above.

Focus: Or, On Comparative Advantage in Life

Focus

“What single activity would keep you fascinated and motivated for the rest of your life?” 

Do you know what that would be? 

It’s not simply sitting on beach, doing nothing. Not for the rest of your life, every day. And it’s not just something that pays well, because we’re assuming you could do anything. And it doesn’t have to be something you already do. There are no rules here at all. 

Think about it.

See more by clicking the link above.

Learning Log Uses

Here are few things to keep in mind as you write learning logs each day. If you are skipping any step in this process, you probably are not fully learning the material or have gaps in your knowledge that you are unaware of and could cause problems for you on exam day.

1. Preview the content
1. What prior information do you know about this topic already?
2. Chunk the content into small “digestible bites”
1. See chapter outlines
3. Scaffold (sequence) the chunks
1. See chapter outlines
4. Process each chunk
1. Discuss the topic with a classmate
2. Summarize it orally or in writing
3. Explain it to someone else
4. Check whether you can complete the exercises and worksheets
5. Connect material to outside of class examples 
5. Represent the content in linguistic and/ or nonlinguistic ways
1. Complete an assessment
1. Written exam
2. Practice IA
3. Oral presentation
6. Reflect on your learning

Robert Reich (Ranking Colleges)

Really cool post from Robert Reich on college rankings and what does or not qualify a university to be considered "elite" or highly ranked.

Of personal interest to me as a Californian, the University of California system as a whole had three of the top five schools and four of the top ten. If we add Stanford, California had five of the top ten spots on the recommended Washington Monthly link below!

Robert Reich (Ranking Colleges)

So, with college application season almost upon us, where should aspiring college students and their parents look for advice? 

In my view, not U.S. News and World Report’s annual college guide (out last week).

US New claims its rankings are neutral. Baloney.

We need another guide for ranking colleges – one that doesn’t look at the fatness of alumni wallets or the amount spent on each student, but does take account of economic diversity and dedication to public service. 

Fortunately, there is one. It’s a relatively new one, provided by the Washington Monthly.

An Economist Answers "Which issues are important (to me)?"

TheMoneyIllusion » Which issues are important (to me)?

I used a utilitarian criterion. On another day, I’d put many of these in totally different categories, but that’s how I feel today. On many of the key issues I’m not really with either party, but perhaps lean a bit Dem on the top issues. I vote libertarian. I left out some issues like feminism, racial equality, gay rights, etc., because it’s hard to pin down the specific public policy issues that are relevant today. Thus instead of feminism I have abortion and prostitution, issues that especially impact women. Obviously I support the gains that various groups have made over time in achieving greater respect and legal rights. I suspect that animal rights should be high on the list, but don’t know much about the issue. 

PS. The importance of an issue reflects the interaction if its intrinsic importance, and the plausibility of changing the outcome with different public policies.

A Response to "How Much Stress Do You Need for Success?"

Scott H. Young recently wrote an article titled “How Much Stress Do You Need for Success?”. In it, he described his thoughts on stress and came to the conclusion,

My sense is that stress is useful to prompt a specific action, to a specific threat, or to promote alertness during a brief period of danger. That’s it. Any stress which doesn’t facilitate these purposes is wasted and therefore any beliefs that stress is necessary must be limited to these contexts.

This seems like a reasonable conclusion until you notice a few things. He never once defines the terms he’s working with. Throughout his article, he constantly interchanges stress with both fear and anxiety and in those senses of the word, his conclusion might be right. Fear and anxiety do seem like excellent mechanisms to prompt action and probably are the main reasons we evolved those emotions.

However, stress is a much larger concept than simply fear or anxiety. They are simply two small subsets of the total concept.1

Stress should be thought of as any stimulus which knocks something (not just humans) out of equilibrium.

From there, it is easy to understand that experiencing disequilibrium can be good or bad depending on context. Having unnecessary anxiety as he mentioned in his article in regards to exams or early morning flights is almost certainly wasted energy.

Another example where a person is knocked from equilibrium is eating food. The act of introducing new contents to the stomach fires up a host of processes within your digestion system, which attempts to bring you back into equilibrium by breaking down the contents and shuttling them to the right places.

So what’s the difference between these types of stresses and what stress should we be seeking?

The first example mentioned above (exams/flights) does not augment your work capacity in any meaningful way. In fact, it can harm your ability to work as your mental focus will be on things out of your control and thereby leave you with less bandwidth to productively attack issues within your control (such as quality sleep in his example).

The second example mentioned above (eating) does augment your work capacity. By eating and digesting food properly, we are left with more energy and the ability to do more work.

And this really gets to the heart of the whole stress “issue”.

“Good” stress, or what Hans Selye referred to as “eustress” in opposition to “distress”, results in positive adaptations that enable increased work capacity, i.e. increased energy.2

“Bad” stress results in maladaptations that decrease work capacity and lower your total energy.

All of this points directly to our answer of when we need stress. We need it any time we are looking to create positive adaptations that enable us to do more work. Period.

So can we find “examples of low-stress, high-achievement individuals”, which would then “put water on the theory that high stress is a prerequisite to accomplishment” as Scott puts it?

Of course.

Just like we can find individuals that are able to squat 500 pounds the first time they walk into a gym. Lifting 500 pounds for any person is an impressive accomplishment, just not one that required stress for that individual. They were genetically gifted and able to accomplish more with less when compared to the average individual.

This is what’s known as the “law of individual differences” within the strength and conditioning community and it is equally apt in Scott’s examples.3

Not all high achieving individuals will need loads of stress to develop adaptations that enable them to achieve great things. Some are simply born with those adaptations or with genetics that allow them to adapt quicker and more with less stress, thereby accelerating them to achievement in half the time another person might need.

So, yes, we need stress. Stress is good. Not all stress as Scott pointed out, but enough of it that when thought about from the correct perspective, should make us seek and chase down the stress that will help us develop the adaptations we need.

Before closing, I’d like to make one thing exceptionally clear. Stress is about adaptations.

Before you ever intentionally induce stress on yourself or others, it’s a good idea to pause and think about the desired adaptations first. If you don’t know the stress required to create the adaptations you want, consult someone with more knowledge (e.g. teachers, coaches, consultants, etc.).

If you are about to induce stress and you haven’t thought about the likely adaptation, pause and give it a think. You may realize that the stress you’re about to exert on yourself is most likely to result in adaptations you don’t even want and it’s therefore a good idea to simply not go through with the activity or experience and find something else more likely to create the adaptations you do want.

I see this problem in schools all the time. As a system, education often induces very high levels of stress in students without really analyzing the likely adaptations.

One maladaptation I’ve seen from this system is that students view work unfavorably. They have the false belief that any and all work is something handed down from someone else and that they will automatically have little interest in it. This seems to create the disposition in students where they avoid any self-created work and attempt to be happy by only engaging in activities that require little energy expenditure, such as hanging out, playing video games, listening to music, or shopping. This is a shame because research shows that we actually gain more fulfillment and enjoyment from activities that require higher levels of engagement.4

Finally, if you are not looking to create new adaptations, you don’t need to induce any stress. However, if you want new abilities, stress will be involved. In fact, by definition, you can’t have “new” without stress.5

Further Reading

1. The Upside of Stress
2. The Stress of Life
3. Scientific Principles of Strength Training
4. Flow
5. Stimulus-Recovery-Adaptation in Complex Systems

Chasing Excellence

Below is a long quote from Paul Carter, a strength coach who writes regularly for several magazines and other media outlets. Obviously, the quote is on the topic he's paid to write about (lifting weights), but it applies equally to anything else you do in life. If you're wanting to be excellent at something, there are going to be thousands of hours spent alone doing that thing when no one else is around to give you support.

A popular rule of thumb is 10,000 hours, but that was made famous by one journalist (i.e. Malcolm Gladwell) looking at a few research articles by Anders Ericsson. The real truth is that it depends on the field you're chasing expertise and excellence in. Music and chess will take over double or triple that due to the international level of competition.

I haven't seen numbers for computer programming, but would imagine it's closer to 25,000 hours as well. Other fields are probably fairly easy to get ahead of by devoting as little as a few thousand hours. Naturally, the more obscure and less competitive, the less time will be required.

The reason more time is required for more competitive fields is that it takes more and more experience to separate yourself even a fraction of a percent from the rest over time. You can see this in the graph above. It's typically quite fast to go from zero knowledge or skill to intermediate as shown in the rapid rise of the curve; it takes far longer to continue making incremental progress as the rate of learning slows down.

Since some fields are "winner take all", like music, chess, sports, law, medicine, etc., being even a small fraction of a percent better can get you the majority of success in the field. To truly be the best will therefore require thousands of hours toiling away with only small increases of skill with the hope that it pays off with recognition from society that you truly are the best available in your field.

“The true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching.” -- John Wooden 

I read an interesting article this week about a key factor in success, and successful people, is that their will to succeed surpassed that of their need for approval or affirmation by others. 

I have no idea why, but the very first thing that popped in my head, was how often I have read from people that they need training partners, or even a training group. That this was or is a big factor in their success.

This always baffled me. 

I've trained alone for the most part of 26 years. That means I was training a long time before the internet and social media, and all that shit. I never "needed" training partners. I've had a few, and did enjoy it at various times. But I never found that it made a difference in how hard I worked in the slightest. If anything, my 13 year old pushes me harder than anyone else ever has because she always wants to do more work, and doesn't need much rest time between sets. So dad has to work harder to impress his training partner, lest she think he's a lazy bum who is getting outworked by her. 

I'm not saying lots of people haven't been successful because of training partners or even groups, I just find it baffling when someone sees that as a "need" to improve. 

Can you imagine a guy trying to make a college or pro team as a walk on or free agent with the attitude of "I was going to run 100's today, but John can't come so, eh, I don't know." 

That is not the attitude of someone who has a desire to achieve their own personal degree of excellence. 

If there is one thing I've learned over the past few years, it's that your passion and desire to be great at something had better surpass what other people think about you, your efforts, your abilities, and your worth.

I hear guys talking about want to look a certain way, or lift a certain way, then watch them eat shit most of the time, and forget what hard work really looks like in the gym.
Truthfully, I forgot too. Months and months ago I realized my training had become a very comfortable place. Too much complacency. This has happened before. If you're aware enough, you'll know it when it happens to you too. Because you will do all the shit you like to do, the way you like to do it, and have a million excuses as to why you aren't doing the shit that is hard, that you hate.

When the sun sets each day remember, it's about self worth. Which is derived from how you feel about who you are.

And regardless of what someone else says or thinks about you, or your efforts, if you want to be "great" at something, you better do great work when no one else can see it, judge it, or pat you on the back for it.

Day 2 - Introduction to Course Learning Tools for Grade 11 Student

1. How do we learn?
2. Feedly
3. Blogger (2 pages)
1. Home (Learning Log)
2. Portfolio
4. Studying
1. Pacing Guide
2. Chapter Outlines
5. The tests
1. External Assessment
1. Paper 1
2. Paper 2
3. Paper 3 (HL Only)
2. Internal Assessment
1. 3 Commentaries (750 words each)
2. Must be on different sections of the syllabus
3. Must use three different news sources

To Be More Creative, Schedule Your Work at 80% Capacity : The Art of Non-Conformity

This is an idea that has been used in other companies as well. Google has a "20% time" policy in place which essentially allows employees to do whatever they want with 20% of their time at work. Many of Google's best apps have resulted from this non-directed creative work time.

The wonderful book Scarcity also describes the economic and psychological impacts of not scheduling "slack" into your schedule. When you are pressed for time and experience scarcity throughout day, you actually think and perform worse. This has been shown in several studies and I highly recommend the book, which goes into detail on the research. It could be an awesome summer read.

To Be More Creative, Schedule Your Work at 80% Capacity : The Art of Non-Conformity

When Josh and Colby started Jolby & Friends, they were leaving a larger advertising agency. At that agency they would collaborate on work together, but always after hours. As they took the plunge to start their own business they knew that they wanted to have the ability (and their employees to have the ability) to be able to work on things in the studio they were passionate about. 

Therefore, Jolby & Friends runs on 80% capacity. What this allows us to do is go after clients that may not have the largest budgets, create work for art shows, and build out other internal passion projects (like this one, for example). 

What this doesn’t allow for is people taking extra long coffee breaks, playing foosball, working on freelance work or anything of that sort. The idea isn’t for people to have to only work 32 hours but rather enable our staff to be able to create work that in a larger agency they wouldn’t have the opportunity to do. This practice often influences our client work and allows us to always be learning and pushing our current skill sets. 

Lastly, it allows us to be the heroes. When a client calls and says “Is there anyway you can do this for me in a week?” the answer is often replied with a smile and “no problem.”
This isn’t always the case, though. For every upside there’s obviously a downside. One issue we often encounter is contractors and vendors not being able to budget their time as efficiently as we do. We actively work on this by explaining our process in detail as well as showing the upsides to some of our processes. 

The whole idea is based around a simple idea to create a creative environment in which our staff is comfortable, focussed, and—most importantly—excited about what they’re doing.

Get Off The Computer And Complete This Italian Teacher's Summer Assignment. You Won't Regret It.

Get Off The Computer And Complete This Italian Teacher's Summer Assignment. You Won't Regret It.

1. Sometimes, in the morning, go take a walk along the seashore completely alone: look at the way sunlight is reflected on the water and think about the things you love the most in your life; be happy.

2. Try to use some of the new words we learned together this year: the more things you manage to say, the more things you’ll manage to think; and the more things you think, the freer you’ll be.

3. Read as much as you possibly can. But not because you have to. Read because summers inspire adventures and dreams, and when you read you’ll feel like swallows in flight. Read because it’s the best form of rebellion you have (for advice on what to read, come see me).

4. Avoid things, situations and people who make you feel negative or empty: seek out stimulating situations and the companionship of friends who enrich you, who understand you and appreciate you for who you are.

5. If you feel sad or afraid, don’t worry: summer, like every marvelous thing in life, can throw the soul into confusion. Try keeping a diary as a way to talk about how you feel (in September, if you’d like, we’ll read it together).

6. Dance, shamelessly. On a dance floor near your house, or alone in your room. Summer is dance, and it’s foolish not to take part.

7. At least once, watch the sunrise. Stay silent and breathe. Close your eyes, be thankful.

8. Play a lot of sports.

9. If you meet someone you find enchanting, tell him or her as sincerely and gracefully as you can. It doesn’t matter if she or he doesn’t understand. If they don’t, she or he wasn’t meant to be; otherwise, summer 2015 will be a golden time together (if this doesn’t work out, go back to point number 8).

10. Review your notes from our class: Compare the things we read and learned to the things that happen to you.

11. Be as happy as sunlight, as untamable as the sea.

12. Don’t swear. Always be well-mannered and kind.

13. Watch films with heartbreaking dialogue (in English if you can), in order to improve your language skills and your ability to dream. Don’t let the movie end with the final credits: live it again while you’re living and experiencing your summer.

14. In sparkling sunlight or hot summer nights, dream about how your life could and should be. During the summer, always do everything you can to avoid giving up, and everything you can to pursue your dream.

15. Be good.

Deep Habits: Spend Six Months to Master Skills - Study Hacks - Cal Newport

Here's a heuristic to use when looking at skill development. Most you probably do not spend anywhere near six months of dedicated effort to learn skills in school. If you look at the number of days in school (180 per year), you would essentially spend every school day practicing a new skill to really master it. This is where independent study and dedication have to come into play if the skill is indeed valuable.

Deep Habits: Spend Six Months to Master Skills - Study Hacks - Cal Newport

Linkner recalls a piece of wisdom common among professional musicians: a new (musical) technique takes six months to master. As he expands: 

I may have understood the scale, riff, or chord…but it took a good six months to internalize it and make it my own. If I wanted to perform something fresh, new, and bold, I needed to begin the learning process six months prior. 

Linkner then makes the natural connection between the world of music and business. The same six month rule, he notes, applies to many skills that might give you a competitive edge in your professional life: 

If you want to become reasonably knowledgeable in Asian currency fluctuations, salmon fisheries, or assembly line logistics, a solid six months of study will bring you to point where you can hold a thoughtful conversation. 

I strongly agree.

Don’t Trust Anyone Under 500: Dale Davidson’s Unconventional Advice for Graduates

Below are a few quotes from a nice article on building a meaningful life after graduation beyond what modern catch phrases and pop writers propose. 

Interestingly, Haruki Murakami, a very famous Japanese writer, suggests in one of his books that you only read books over 30 years old. While not as extreme as the 500 year old cutoff this article recommends, the idea of biasing who you take advice from to older sources is the same.

Don’t Trust Anyone Under 500: Dale Davidson’s Unconventional Advice for Graduates - Study Hacks - Cal Newport

Modern advice tells us to pursue accomplishments. 

Ancient wisdom tells us to live virtuously. 

Modern advice tells us to enlarge the self. 

Ancient wisdom tells us diminish the self for others. 

Modern advice encourages us to achieve work-life balance. 

Ancient wisdom tells us to work hard at building a life.

Stimulus-Recovery-Adaptation in Complex Systems

Below are two pictures from a book I'm currently reading on strength training titled Scientific Principles of Strength Training. While the topic of strength training may seem completely unconnected from school or economics, it couldn't be more important to understanding how complex systems work (i.e. your brain during learning or the economy during the business cycle).

Stimulus-Recovery-Adaptation

The first picture below describes what happens during a single workout.

Some stimulus is presented during a workout (i.e. running, lifting, etc.), which actually induces a drop in performance due to fatigue. After appropriate recovery, you return to your baseline level of performance and then an adaptation occurs that allows you to perform more work the next time around. Eventually this adaptation reaches a peak before slowly declining again if no new stimulus is presented.

There are a couple important things to keep in mind with this model. The stimulus must be disruptive to homeostasis, meaning you are asking your body to do something it hasn't previously done. If you can do 100 push ups in a row, doing 25 push ups is not a stimulus. You will have to do more to overload your system and disrupt homeostasis.

Second, once you've reached a new performance peak, a new stimulus has to occur. That means in order to improve, ever larger and larger stimuli are required to continue progress. This is where the Navy SEAL motto, "The only easy day was yesterday," comes from. As your performance levels increase, you actually have to work harder to continue improvement.

This leads to the second diagram, which illustrates what several sessions look like over time. As you can see, session one is essentially the first diagram above, except that a new stimulus is presented before the decline in performance begins. This pattern repeats indefinitely if development is to continue with minor deviances to allow full recovery as the stimuli create larger amounts of fatigue.

Now that you understand the process of stimulus-recovery-adaptation, you can start to see it everywhere. For us, the two most important applications are learning in general and economics more specifically.

Learning in General

Learning in general follows this same pattern. Much like your body, your brain is a complex system which requires homeostatic disruption for learning to occur. If you continue to study the same thing you studied yesterday and never increase in difficulty, you won't experience progress (just like the 25 push ups example wouldn't spur progress).

For a student studying math, this might involve attempting to understand basic calculus after learning about algebra and trigonometry. Obviously, this will provide a novel stimulus that is larger than the ones required for the previously mastered subjects in math. That is why we teach students calculus later in school than algebra or trigonometry, just like we ask someone to try 100 push ups after they have shown the ability to do the 25, 50, and 99.

Economics

For our class more specifically, the economy is a complex system like the body or brain. That means growth requires stimulus. In fact, economics already has terms like "fiscal stimulus" and diagrams such as the business cycle, which mirror the second diagram above almost identically.

When you view economic ideas like "bubbles" and "overheating" through this new lens, you can understand quite easily that the stimulus leading up to a crash or crisis was simply too big for the current economy to recover from adequately. Stimuli need to be big enough to induce a performance drop so that recovery and adaptation can occur, but not so big that future growth is hampered by the need for excessive recovery that allows performance to decline and return to baseline as the first diagram above shows.

Bubbles are therefore the equivalent of asking someone to do 100 push ups when their current performance level is only 50 push ups. Of course they are going to crash afterwards. The stimulus was too large to adequately recover from. A stimulus of 55-60 would have been more appropriate.

Summary

1. Create a stimulus that goes beyond your previous abilities
2. Recover appropriately once a performance drop occurs
3. Adapt to a new peak performance level
4. Repeat as necessary for continued progress

What is Wrong With Our Culture [Alan Watts]

Below is a video that was shared on FB by one of the other teachers at school. It reminds me of the renown economist John Kenneth Galbraith's book The Affluent Society, which I read in college and still remember quite well.

Growing wealthy is not the point of economics or even personal and individual finance. The point is to enrich your own life and those of others. As the short video quotes Gandhi, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." 

"This is your life. This is the only one you got."

Bill Murray was asked what he wants that he doesn't already have. His answer is great.

As you watch, try to keep the IB mission statement in mind, which states, "The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world..."

I think his answer is essentially driving at the necessity to be present in order to make the most of this one life we have and make a positive difference in the world. Of course, Murray is much more eloquent and better spoken.

Noam Chomsky - On Being Truly Educated

Core requirements of fulfilled human beings are the abilities to:

1. Inquire
2. Create constructively and independently
3. Without external controls

What needs and requirements do you need met for a fulfilled human life?

What to Do After (and in) College

Economists Offer These 10 Career Tips for Today's Graduates - Bloomberg Business

1. Be grateful you're graduating now
2. Pack up and move
3. Don't be a "lifer"
4. Go to grad school (if you can afford it)
5. Learn to code
6. And keep learning after that 
7. Don't do the boring stuff
8. Remember that practicality pays
9. Or brush up on your people skills
10. Don't be above slumming it

What to Learn in College to Stay One Step Ahead of Computers - NYTimes.com

The successful occupations, by this measure, shared certain characteristics: People who practiced them needed complex communication skills and expert knowledge. Such skills included an ability to convey “not just information but a particular interpretation of information.” They said that expert knowledge was broad, deep and practical, allowing the solution of “uncharted problems.” 

In a separate May 5 statement, Prof. Sean D. Kelly, chairman of the General Education Review Committee, said a Harvard education should give students “an art of living in the world.” 

Many of these issues have arisen in my own academic life. My teaching has changed over the decades. I try to make it more useful in confronting issues of creativity and morality in the work world.