A man sits on the third step of the Grand Palais, in his hands a tattered copy of Brontë’s Villette, having found himself in a position that he has always wanted to never be in. He sits in waiting, in part for a dear friend’s suggested arrival and in part for a former lover to return and reconcile a kindled bond so ferociously torn. The man sets down his text so as to ponder over the scrambling Paris crowd on the Avenue du Général Eisenhower. He eyes with intent to find something, someone, that he will never again lay eyes…

“Students Will Be Able To” (SWBAT) is a public school lesson plan system that many educators use to highlight course objectives. It is generally a brief statement posted in classrooms for teacher and student reference.

Students Will Be Able To:

Learn, we claim, but that is in question

Become scholarly individuals, but that is out of the question

Students will be able to attend, with attention on attendance, but not on attentiveness

SWBAT reinvent the future through preparations built for the past

And don’t forget, with utmost importance, SWBAT complete a five page essay based on rock formations in order…

Before continuing with this piece, it should be made clear that it isn’t going to be about anything in particular. Just words on paper with no true significance or thematic elements to dissect. I may not enhance my writing and may very well be wasting my time and the readers’, but carry on if you wish.

I have nothing to write about. I’m not just talking about right now — I never have anything to write about. I’m just an eighteen-year-old white kid from the suburbs of Boston attending a flagship university in Utah. There’s nothing interesting about me. I…

Through a handful of digest emails and a sprinkle of investigation, one observation has become increasingly apparent since joining Medium: everyone is trying to tell everyone else how to operate.

How to Really Know You’re In Love, How to Become Self-Aware in 20 Minutes, How to Be the Type of Person Everyone Wants to Know — these just a few of the innumerable “how-to” titles across this platform. And while there is nothing wrong with the advice, per se, there is something wrong with the principle.

“In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else’s mind or…

According to Dr. George Land, a pioneering voice behind Transformation Theory (the variation of creativity), we’re screwed. More specifically, we’re screwing ourselves.

72 years ago, Carl Brigham designed the framework for what is formally known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), a subgenre of standardized testing. The evaluation was accepted by a predominantly white America as it was intended to “prove the superiority of the Nordic races”.1 Composing the test were questions concerning baseball trivia, beef cuts, and brand names; in other words, the white-mans-knowledge at the time. …

I once told a University mathematics professor that “someone close to me passed away” after oversleeping on the morning of an exam. That class had a no make-up policy, regardless of the reasoning, and after kicking myself for the blunder, I quickly crafted the phony email. It was the only excuse with enough gravity to sway the professor in my favor.

I doubted that a second-chance would be granted — the standards had been detailed thoroughly on the first day of class and there weren’t to be exceptions made. …

Over the next several pages, I will detail a process so radically flawed, however, one that I participate in. And don’t let that fact — that sickly ironic fact — slip from your memory, because its existence is more of an argument in itself than I could ever possibly assemble.

I find humorous the expression, oft-used by the pragmatic elder, “get your thinking cap on.” I must’ve thrown my thinking cap into the nearest dumpster before the “juvenile” age of eleven. And not for a lack of trying to fit the one-size-fits-all cap on my dome, but for a lack…