Erik Torenberg

The Palmer Squares

2013-01-04T10:44:00.001-08:00

I interviewed and wrote about a rap group I've been a big fan of recently: The Palmer Squares. The profile is below the fold.

In other news, I've recently been relishing Rushdie's books: Midnight's Children, Shame, now the Satanic Verses, and after I'll read his recent memoir.

I Watch a Palmer Squares video, and I have no idea what I’m looking at. Why are two white boys rapping in a bathtub? I almost want to cringe. I’m about to click to a different page, but then the lyrics hit me —

“It's been getting harder to tell between God and the devil

Which is just a bitch and which is offering help?

Yo you gotta play the cards you were dealt

And if you tryna earn a buck you better learn how to market yourself

I'm an, artist starvin' like Karen Carpenter

Barking generic garbage and carvin' satanic stars into park benches

Put my piff in the spliff

Keepin' a stiff upper lip

Spittin' some ignorant shit solely to spark tension”

— And I take hand off of the mouse to listen. And listen, and listen, and listen,

Four hours later, after scouring their YouTube oeuvre, I knew I had to interview them. Three months later, over Skype, I got the chance to meet the wordsmiths behind the witticisms.

***

Term, short for Terminal Knowledge, is a stout kid with a round face. You’re both shocked and charmed when you see Term, who grew up listening to Bob Dylan and Dean Martin, raps as though he has a firecracker up his ass, jumping up and down, and saying things like,A fortified design of the mortified and blind, I ain't suicidal, it just sorta crossed my mind”

Acc, short for Accumental, is the Hutch to Term’s Starsky. Older, scruffier, Acc combines introspection with silly humor, ambition with melancholy, and spits more movie references than Soulja Boy drops swag references.

By their appearances, you could mistake Term and Acc, The Palmer Squares — Palmer for their Chicago street name, Square for its ordinariness — for frat boys at the University of Colorado or even Hipsters in Williamsburg.

What you couldn’t tell, though, is that they can rap their asses off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSRD3hMRjUU

Which is kind of their point They’re proving that “"you don't gotta put on a costume to be a musician or to be something that you aspire to be. It can all be about just the fact that you're some ordinary idiot and like, mostly when dudes meet us they laugh when we tell them we rap or some shit.” Acc interjects "Somebody laughed at me today when I started rapping, like, whatever. But that's the angle we're playing: You don't expect us to rap, but if you heard us, you might be surprised…we're music for the normal folks.” Acc and Term look at each other with a knowing shrug. “We're a couple squares. “

Their music, however, begs to differ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3_ehoqISCs

Acc, 24, and Term, 22, have been friends since childhood, and started rhyming when, disappointed with the heaps of wackness blared on the radio, they thought they could do better.

Their timing was propitious. The Palmer Squares have come of age in the YouTube era, where any aspiring musician that connects with his/her audience can amass a fan base. The famous YouTube Cyphers, where Term and Acc made a name for themselves, got 100,000s, if not millions of views. Tellingly, the Cyphers also featured a bald 30 year old caucasian, a thoughtful Lebanese chick, a few asian dudes, and a black guy rocking hipster glasses, embracing his nerdiness. Indeed, times have changed in hip hop.

10 years ago, there’s no way Palmer Squares could be even thought of as commercially viable. Two white kids from the ‘burbs? No way. After all, They don’t rap about gangs and prisons, toil and torture, hardship and homelessness. No —

“The solution, the formula, your fake ass crew need to scoop a thesaurus up

See I'm the fusion of truth and immortal love

Praise me until someone can prove there's a lord above” —

— No, they don’t.

Unlike other white rappers, who typically tend to rap with rage to compensate, the Palmer Squares are serious about not taking themselves too seriously. (They rap one video in a bathtub.) They relish the interplay between the serious and the silly, noting that the “intended-to-be-serious type shit can at the same time feel like parody music, with the goofy shit that’s sprinkled in there”

Their style is reminiscent of Das Racist, two rappers known for their brilliant combination of the brilliantly juvenile and the somehow profound; who are loved because they’re simultaneously not-joking and joking about how they’re joking. (Incidentally, Das Racist is on the list of artists the Palmer Squares want to collaborate with.)

However, their music isn’t solely movie references and weed jokes and bashings of mainstream rap, although, to be sure, it features plenty of those things. They also rap about, among other topics, economic inequality, corporate greed, and the state of YouTube.

Their energy evokes Eminem but without the trailer park and if he watched David Fincher movies. The inspiration for their raps, by their own accord, is less of a cathartic measure, and more of an exclamatory love of the craft". “We definitely write some conceptual shit when we have something to get off our chest,” Term K submits” but you don't always have something to get off your chest -- and i'm pretty much always going to have something to rhyme with.”

I can only take so much. A couple times, throughout the interview, I feel like screaming: Acc, Enough movie references; Term, Stop mooning people, and both of you, Enough with the trivial Palmer Square Reports! But, truth be told, The Palmer Squares wouldn’t be who they are without their antics.

And, ultimately, I love them for the whole package. For the sense that, through their music, I actually know them. For mixing the high-brow, low-brow, and the occasional deep.

Still, It makes me wonder, though, how long their shtick will last. The Palmer Squares have already proven that they can dominate a YouTube Cypher, and that they can make us both think and laugh at the same time. But at this point, It’s like, we get it. Write a song with a chorus already.

They too, understand that, as a group, The Palmer Squares need to evolve. Their primary goal -- in fact, the reason they started rapping)-- was to collaborate with Youtube Superstar “Wax”. They’ve accomplished that.

So. What's their next goal? The two answer without missing a beat. “Live off of making our music. It doesn't have to be luxuriously and, fucking super-baller—just to not need a job because this [hip hop] is what I can call my job, and not be poor as shit at the same time, [to] find that balance.”

“To be, like, a working musician" Acc interjects, as seamlessly as he interjects in their tracks, “Because I work [at my day job] during the day, and I’m not motivated because I’d rather be working on my music. But that doesn’t bring in enough [money], so if we ever got to the point where it was just comfortable—”

"And if not that,” Term chimes in, making me unsure if he’s selling himself short or wise about the realities of the music industry, "If that's unavailable, ultimately, we wanna be a name in hip hop. We want, like 15 years from now, for when cats who listen to hip hop, we're just one of those names that you list off.”

And they want do it their own way: They think it would be "nice to find some sort of indie, mainstream, indie” Term wobbles his hands to indicate a combination of the both “not mainstream but one of those indie shits” — Term cracks up — “that's getting a lot of push and you don't need to fit some sort of corporate sound. “

***

But, while they may be heading there, following the likes of fellow Youtube sensations Wax, George Watsky, and Dumbfoundead into broader audiences— The Palmer Squares just aren’t there yet. Although Acc would rather be plotting rhyme schemes, he has to keep his day job to make ends meet; Term K’s about to graduate college and will likely have to find paid gigs that don’t involve rapping.

Making a living as musicians, indeed, will require ambition and packaging and next level-ness that we (just) haven’t seen yet from the Palmer Squares.

Which they acknowledge, nodding to the importance of marketing. But you can easily get the sense — from how their eyes light up when they talk about craftsmanship, or artists they aspire to collaborate with — that their priority is, above all, to write dope shit. They got this far not by going around asking people to “peep their links!” but by making quality music.

For better or worse, The Palmer Squares just aren’t about attention in that way. They’re the rare artists who care more about sharing their music than starring in the limelight. They seemed to only take the interview because I pestered them. From their website, you can’t tell anything about their personal lives except that they make music and that you can find them “performing in some shit hole.” After spending an hour speaking with them, I don’t even know what their real names are. And yet, I’m unsure whether their reticence stems from modesty, laziness, ambivalence to fame, or some combination of the three.

It’s manifested in how they treat their angsty fan-base from up north. They can’t last a day without a fan from Toronto heckling them: “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO TORONTO?!” When I asked when they were planning on going to, you know, Toronto, to perform for your legions of fans, they were caught off guard. Oh, Acc stammered, as if he were deliberating the trip for the first time, yeah, I guess we should check that out. I wanted to reach through the computer, grab them by the shoulders and tell them: GET YOUR ASS TO TORONTO, PRONTO!

***

They’re giddy about their upcoming projects; I can sense a nervous anticipation. Their next EP, which’ll feature Term’s illustrations, Acc’s video work, and collaborations with artists that they admire, will drop before the end of the year. It’ll be a big test for them.

I’m giddy too. Their previous work was mere YouTube fun, I sense, but now this EP will reflect the gnawing feeling that time’s running out. They’ll rap about shitty jobs they have to take and the first groupies they encounter and what it'll be like to be two ordinary white dudes who get more famous in a predominantly black culture -- all in an endearingly shocking blend of original rhyme schemes, thoughtful societal critiques, and idiosyncratic showmanship.

Long term, though, who knows where the peak is for the Palmer Squares. Whether they’ll have the initiative to tour the country in a U-Haul; — and stop by Toronto! — whether they’re capable of employing the marketing prowess of Wax and Watsky before him; whether they’ll drop a well-produced, cleverly thought-out, concept album; or whether, despite their best efforts, enough people will “get it” and connect with their music.

There’s one thing I can say for sure: Their music, videos, and journey will be anything but Square.

Here’s hoping that, sooner than later, they’ll be able to quit their day jobs.

Just Freestyle

2012-11-13T12:04:00.004-08:00

The below piece was written a month ago and published in DVP's Streetfighter magazine. It followed us rapping on stage at the Quicken Family Reunion here and here.

***

Rapt.fm itself was born from a freestyle. I didn’t know, nine months ago, at Startup weekend Ann Arbor, that I would even pitch the concept, let alone pursue it full time in Detroit.

I had had the idea for over a year, and thought it was good, but wasn’t sure others would agree. Well, Why Not, I thought, and grabbed the mic.

Today, after the competition accomplishments, after the national press, after all the excitement and learning and even though we have not yet launched — not even begun — the experience has convinced me that—

Sometimes, you just have to freestyle. Even when people are listening.

***

It’s the morning of the Quicken Family Reunion, where CEOs from around the country have flown in to connect, contemplate, and collaborate.

Stevie, a team member, and I are in the bathroom, in adjacent stalls. He busts out the beatbox. I reply with some rhymes.

After about three minutes, we suddenly hear a voice from the other stall.

“Hey—Go do that on stage” A man says as though he owns the place. “I’m serious. That’s amazing.”

In the next stall over, hearing us freestyle and beatbox, is none other than Dan Gilbert, Chairman of Quicken Loans, who does, in fact, own the place.

“Holy Shit it’s Dan Gilbert” I gasp, playing it cool.

Stevie takes over, assuring Gilbert that we can “make it”, and, by way of a rap, pitch rapt.fm.

The crowd loves the unplanned performance. Our previously empty pockets flood with business cards, potential partnership ideas, and advice for rapt.fm. This only further convinces me—

Sometimes, you just have to freestyle. You never know who’s listening.

Book Review: So Good They Can't Ignore You

2012-10-04T08:32:00.002-07:00

Let me start by saying that I’m deeply grateful to Cal Newport for his insights over the past few years. They’ve encouraged me to implement Deliberate Practice, batch e-mails, engage in a shut-down ritual, delete my facebook, and eschew the Passion Mindset in favor of a craftsman approach.

His book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, is one of the best career books out there. Below is a brief summary:

Great careers do not arise from pre-existing passions. They spring from the cultivation of career capital – the development of rare and valuable skills that people will pay for – and the cashing in on a career that grants autonomy, creativity, and opportunities for mastery.

Note that passion is a side effect of mastery--and not the other way around.

You don’t follow competence, autonomy, and relatedness (i.e your passion), you earn it by providing something valuable in return.

Sometimes we identify our life’s work early on, as something we’re instinctively inclined to do. My friend knew at a young age, for example, through his predilection and talent for debate, that he was going to “talk” for a living. Sometimes we’ve unwittingly put in enough Deliberate Practice as a kid to reach 10,000 hours before we have to make career decisions. Professional athletes, Cal concedes, have followed their passion since as long as they can remember.

But most of us haven’t put in the time to master anything without years of hard work.

And that’s why following your passion first, before cultivating any value at that passion, is dangerous – you’re not good enough at it to provide real tangible value to society. You’ve got it backwards: You earn creativity, control, and impact at your job (i.e passion for it) by being so good at it.

If you understand this, you’ll avoid the “chronic job-hopping and crippling self-doubt” that plagues the wide-eyed idealists who expect to have amazing opportunities without putting in the work – the 10,000 hours, the 10 years – to earn them.

Putting in the work means, to quote Steve Martin, being so good they can’t ignore you.

Everything else – your brand, your network, your social media presence – these are all horribly secondary to Being So Good.

***

Ira Glass, award winning radio-show host, notes that you won’t be So Good when you begin a creative pursuit.

“All of us who do creative work…you get into this thing, and there’s like a ‘gap’. What you’re making isn’t so good, okay?... It’s trying to be good but… it’s just not that great” he explained in an interview about his career. “The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that’s the hardest phase,” he elaborated in his Roadtrip Nation session. In other words, this is not the story of a prodigy who walked into a radio station after college and walked out with a show. The more you read about Glass, the more you encounter a young man who was driven to develop his skills until they were too valuable to be ignored. “

Ira Glass didn’t follow his passion. He earned it, by “forcing” himself through the work—by putting in the deliberate practice.

And yet. It’s not just about working hard. It’s about working smart.

“If you just show up and work hard, you’ll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better. “

***

An example of Deliberate Practice in action:

“It didn’t take long for Alex to discover what allows some writers to succeed in catching the attention of a networks while so many others fail: They write good scripts…Alex turned his attention to writing. Lots of writing. During the eight months he spent as an assistant he dedicated his nights to working on a trio of different writing projects.”

“He threw himself into a project beyond his current capabilities and then hustled to make it a success.”

“He then obsessively sought feedback, on everything—even if , looking back now, he’s humiliated at the quality of scripts he was sending out.”

“even now he’s an established writer he still reads screenwriting books, looking for places where his craft could stand improving.”

***

After telling an investment tax-banker he should quit his job, Cal added 3 disqualifiers for applying the craftsman mindset:

1) The job presents few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable

2) The job focuses on something you think is useless or perhaps even actively band for the world

3) The job forces you to work with people you really dislike.

I think, with more case studies, people would have a better idea of whether their job disqualifies the use of the craftsman mindset. More on this later.

***

Identify whether you’re in a Winner Take All or an Auction Market. Alex, the writer profiled above, entered a winner-take all market—who ever wrote the best scripts earned the most success; everything else—connections, degree—was secondary.

Auction markets, however, rely on diversity of experience. Business leaders and Educators, it seems, reside in auction markets. Teachers, then, rather than solely focusing on instruction techniques, should gain valuable non-class room experiences (traveling, working, performing), to give more credibility and zest to their classroom.

***

I'm most excited to hear the discussions that follow the book: How people can use it in their career, how it compliments or differs from The Start-Up of You and how education systems can adapt to a newer, more nuanced understanding of career development.

Social Conservatism

2012-09-30T14:40:00.000-07:00

In this insightful piece, Brooks asserts that conservatism has split into two camps: Economic conservatism, which champions unfettered markets and abhors government intervention, and traditional conservatism, which aimed to preserve the ethics and traditions that "would encourage people to work hard, finish school and postpone childbearing until marriage."

Today’s conservatives, as Brooks laments, are purely economic. They only appeal to "people as potential business owners, but not as parents, neighbors and citizens."

What’s interesting to me is his definition of social conservatism, and, surprisingly, how much I agree with it.

Social conservatives, in Brooks words, aren’t religious zealots or anti-abortion or gay marriage. They just want people to continue the ethics and traditions that have flourished for generations.

Social conservatism isn't odds with Progressivism at all; in fact it's, perhaps paradoxically, just a milder version of it. Since “the individual is foolish but the species is wise", reform should happen “steadily but consistently”.

Most profoundly, for me, It holds that “life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base."

Social conservatism -- where families are intact, self-discipline is the rule, children are secure and government provides a subtle hand – is the secure base.

***

After reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, where the characters drown in their depravity, succumbing to their every desire and whim; where they don't stand by any principles or ideologies; reading this piece is refreshing.

The social conservatism Brooks outlines (a milder, prudent, version of progressivism), which roots itself strongly in the power of traditions, communities, as well as the self-discipline of the individual -- is looking evermore attractive.

Halfway Point

2012-06-18T13:04:00.002-07:00

A token of my appreciation and gratitude for everything that's happened in the last six months, in images, videos, and freestyles:

***

Also, I gotta add how grateful I am for this hilariously brilliant piece about my band, Chaser.

Start Up Weekend

2012-05-08T08:49:00.002-07:00

Below is a piece I wrote in late January, which I decided to not publish then. Seeing as this idea – my company, Rapt – is what I’ll be working on for the foreseeable future, I find this the appropriate time to share my thoughts from right after Rapt was born.

***

What do you do when you win? You thank everyone, acknowledge the forces of luck, and, above all, you don’t think for a second that you uniquely deserved any of this.

It could have been anyone.

***

Start Up Weekend, founded by the Kauffman foundation, is a 54-hour event dedicated to “sharing ideas, forming teams and launching start ups”. Inviting passionate developers, designers, and entrepreneurs to cities all across the world, the event thus far succeeded in its mission: “Roughly 80% of participants plan on continuing working with their team or startup after the weekend. Over 36% of Startup Weekend startups are still going strong after 3 months.”

I spot Lumley and Shiva, my partners from the first start up weekend I attended four months ago in Chicago. There, we built a company called Motiv8ion, which encouraged people to achieve their goals by publicizing them in front of selected friends and sending users customized reminders (“Hey, you! Get off your ass and run!”)

In doing customer discovery ex post facto, we found that our users 1) don't want to publicize their goals, 2) don't want to have their friends see them and, thus, 3) would never use our site.

Our confidence in Motiv8ion was unfazed. After all, we would (probably) use it, so why wouldn’t the rest of the world (pay to) use it?

(This raises a philosophical question: Do you need to be both a user and a believer of your product for it to be – or for you to feel -- successful?)

It was with this question we were grappling: we all wanted to use our product, but in different — and often, conflicting — ways. As a result, we spent most of the 54 hours in Chicago deliberating over our vision. We ended up compromising and choosing a bit of everything, which led to an unclear, unimpressive, and unready product.

This time would be different.

***

Lumley had just quit his job as a consultant to pursue start-ups, he told me. This wasn’t surprising. “Epiphanies” for new careers and dreams tend to occur at Start Up Weekends. Shiva approaches me and reminds me that we’re on the market for an education-related product. We begin to search around.

One person wants to discreetly record our conversations so that we can easily look back to recall first names or review business meetings. (How Big Brother-esque). Another person wants to build a better platform for matching people who want to informally teach and learn concrete skills. (Pretty neat). Another wants to implement game mechanics at parties and clubs – 1 point for a drink, 10 points for hooking up. (No, thanks).

Before I know it, 50 pitches have gone by, and now the organizer is beseeching us for more ideas. I muster up the courage and get up out of my seat, conjuring a pitch in my mind. Though I don’t have any solutions, I do identify a problem: GPA, the standard measurement for students, isn’t aligned with actual learning. I’ve felt for a while that the education system was set up to encourage grade-grubbing at the expense of developing the entrepreneurial mindset, intellectual curiosity, or even just moral character.

“But I have another pitch, too” I jumped, as an old idea flashed through my mind. “real-time video rap battles on the internet”.

Shortly afterwards, a herd of participants flocked to me. “I loved your idea! That’s brilliant – let’s work on it!” Ecstatically, I exclaimed, “Oh great! Have you thought of more solutions to the GPA conundrum?”

“GPA?” They asked, looking at each other, and then back at me “I wanna rap battle!”

My Rap idea would get the most votes out of all the 72 pitches.

***

We’re 30 hours into the competition. One day at Start Up Weekend feels like eight normal days.

Shiva and I are evaluating customer segments, revenue models, and rollout strategies. I’m speaking about affiliate marketing, corporate sponsorships, and “synergies” like I have a Wharton MBA. Two days ago, I knew much more about the philosophy underlying Thoreau’s Walden Pond than I did about anything taught at Wharton.

Today, strangely, I feel as if I know a bit more about both.

Throughout, we find time to chat about personal matters. A teammate tells me more about his start up on the side, his ad agency, his life. Another teammate interrupts to give the good news: “100 people filled out our customer survey…and one lives in Africa!” I inquire about Lumley’s new start up ventures. I ask a participant on another team if she’s ever been in love. I speak to a mentor who’s a venture capitalist in South West Michigan but spent time in London. Meanwhile, we’re showing each other recent prototypes, brainstorming, laughing, high-fiving.

There’s just something about spending an extended period of uninterrupted time with the same people that’s inexplicably unifying. There’s a level of trust, comfort, and openness that cannot be reached during the standard 45-minute coffee date. I also find that, somehow, I’m having fonder thoughts of people I haven’t spoken to for the past couple days.

Later, we gather the education thinkers together and talk about hosting an event similar in format to start up weekend — conjoined with panelists and brainstorm sessions — but specified to education.

What excites me most about Start Up Weekend is the potential for applying the benefits of the event to different types venues. Why is it only limited to technology start-ups? Why not expand to fields like the environment, health, or social entrepreneurship — or why not assemble screenwriters, dancers, and other creative types, in the same building and host an “art-up weekend?”

The potential to generate ideas, develop relationships, and share insights at Start Up Weekend is unparalleled. As of now, it’s the crash course to see if you’re cut out for entrepreneurship — Be an entrepreneur for two days and see how it feels. Using a similar type of format, students could also simulate being a teacher for a day, or a doctor, or a banker, and evaluate if that path is right for them.

Just an idea.

***

We’re 53 hours in.

After a myriad of technical scares, we’re ready to present. I’ll spare you our pitch, which featured a live rap battle, and just say that the judges enjoyed it; so much so, in fact, that we won the competition.

What happened next was a blur. It was announced that we won free tickets to San Francisco to pitch our idea to investors. Friends rushed to congratulate us, showering us with laughs and smiles. The Judges approached us to assure us that this could really take off, handing us their business cards.

“Great Job” a participant says as he pats my back, revealing a rueful smile. This participant was last year’s start up weekend winner, and one year ago, his company was promised some investment money. But, as he related, eyes downcast, he never saw any of it. He’s now without a job, without money, without the showering of laughs and smiles, unsure of his next move.

His story brings me back down to earth, but only slightly.

Shiva and I call our team together to gauge interest: who wants to continue working on this? All hands shoot up, except one: Ken. He can’t; he’s got a full-time job. But, he says, he’s happy to give advice whenever we need it.

“1% Equity – that’s all I want!” he adds, for good measure.

***

As I’m about to leave, I’m affronted by a wide-eyed and smiling student. “Hey! I thought you had a really good idea!”

“Oh cool. Are you ready to rap?

“No—I mean the GPA problem; let me know if you do something about it!”

Here Comes The Sun

2012-04-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

A very close friend of mine, in many ways someone who I grew up with in college, took her life last week.

Jordan Harris was loved by virtually everyone she came into contact with. She will be remembered as the “Sun”, always extending warmth to those around her. She was someone who danced and sang and cooked and listened and studied and hugged and laughed and loved.

Jordan brought medical devices to Ghana one summer, worked for a women empowerment organization the next summer, and studied in Argentina last summer.

Jordan organized yoga retreats, musical jam sessions, dinner parties, to just name a few things.

Jordan created communities.

Her death is nothing short of a tragedy. Everyone’s reaction is, Not Her! And then immediate tears.

Our friends commented on how she brought all of us together. She was the glue.

What do you do when such a friend – such a loved one -- inexplicably and irrevocably leaves our world?

You acknowledge the complexities inherent in people and that you’ll never fully understand them. You celebrate that person’s life and their impact on you. You relish in the memories: her various facial expressions, her voice intonations—her laugh.

On Sunday, dozens of students came to the arboretum to celebrate Jordan’s life by living exactly as she did: surrounded by quality food, music making, and special people. (And, in Jordan's presence, everyone was a special person.)

In the last week, Strangers have become friends. Foes have let their guards down. There’s been a tremendous showing of solidarity. We’ve all cried, hugged, and said our good-byes together.

Even in the wake of her death, she’s building communities.

We can learn much from her death: Depression is a very serious mental illness. It can plague the happiest of people and have the most deleterious of effects. (I didn't know this.)

But we can learn much more from her life. From her example.

Jordan was particularly adept at living in the moment. At loving unconditionally. At linking her happiness with that of the community.

Forgive the pun, but I think this is important: We’re taught to want to be like Michael. We should want to be more like Jordan.

We’re taught, even if subconsciously, to be the star, to win at all costs. Often, we simply give lip service to serving our communities, to loving one's family, to enjoying the simple things in life.

There will, in all likelihood, be no full-feature biography of Jordan Harris. She will not be as publicly revered as, say, Lebron James would, if he happened to die today.

And yet, I think, Her story has much more to offer us.

Jordan had the wisdom of a mother. In fact, I called her exactly that -- okay, mom -- when she'd be caring or kind.

(She knit me an effing scarf, for god's sake, which took her weeks on end, just to show her affection. I'll have that token of love for the rest of my life.)

Jordan, as our stories celebrated, knew how to have fun. Despite her accomplishments and her potential, she rarely took herself too seriously. One of her favorite quotes was, "You can't dance and stay uptight."

The other day, I perused my inbox for our gchat and e-mail exchanges, and found a few gems. In this letter, which was a response to me coyly suggesting she straighten her hair more often, her humor rang:

“cute hair dig - i've straightened my hair maybe five times this summer, and have grown to love the curls. ha.

also you have a big nose.”

On her trip to Ghana, she reflected:

“it was nuts..but they were all so friendly, EVERYONE was. the best international travel experience ever (not that i've had that many). and i got lots of marriage proposals! fun, huh? not because the men wanted green cards, but because they wanted me to come and cook for them and their families. but rose, who was one of the children out of the house, wanted us to find her a white american man to come and marry her and taker her away...interested? gahhhh, so much more to tell. it was fantastic. “

hit me back yo...and don't feel pressured to send a 1500 word-essay either!

can't wait to see youuuuuuu!!

jo”

She was slightly unsure about her talents, which were numerous, impressive, and applicable, and I would immediately let her know that. But I could have been more specific: I wish I told her that she knew how to laugh, love, and, thus, how to live well. What more could you want?

To study her life is an education in and of itself. You cannot teach what she had.

Amazingly, she simultaneously was a happy-go-lucky lover and a deep, remarkable thinker. Responding to a book we both enjoyed, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which is all about a girl contemplating suicide, Jordan reflected:

“and we really are nothing but dust in the wind, right? here for a blink, then gone forever. so i think once you accept that, what else is there to be but suicidal or hedonistic? maybe not hedonistic, in the negative sense of the word, but hedonistic like utilitarian? like doing the things that make people the most happy, including (really starting with) yourself. otherwise, the blink is a waste, i think. that's as much as there is to it. (in my humble opinion) and i choose the latter, because suicide is just as much of a waste as spending your life doing something that doesn't bring you and others joy (or maybe it's the other way around, but you get the idea)."

(and in that same e-mail she wrote: "loving work downtown..fun to meet people, MOST fun to speak in spanish con mis compadres en la cocina...i'm gonna get back into rollerblading, i decided...if you're ever in NJ again we should meet somewhere in the middle and bike around for a while. bring your dad...)

i heard this again the other day: "life is not a dress rehearsal" it doesn't get much more cliche than that, but where else do clichés come from but the truth? i'll never be young again, in this place, with these people in this exact situation. so why shouldn't i make the most of it?”

She did make the most of it. In many more ways than she or we will ever know. Sending lots of love to you, Jordan.

The Chaser EP

2012-03-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

After writing, editing, and recording four songs over the last year and a half, my band released our first EP last week. Take a listen and enjoy!

The Entrepreneurial Kid

2012-03-07T08:35:00.000-08:00

In an Atlantic article ten years ago, David Brooks coined the term that defined that generation of Ivy League students: The Organization Kid. The Organization Kid worked hard and didn’t rebel: A typical day included class, sports, extra curricular activities, forty-five minute coffee dates, parties—and virtually zero down time. Everything was meticulously scheduled and outwardly “productive”. Intellectual curiosity, wandering, and character development were out. Stellar grades, high-paying jobs, and remarkable parties were in—this, after all, was what society expected from them.

Today, although its presence has sharply diminished, the Organizational Kid ethos is still prevalent. We see it praised in the TV show entourage, and attacked in the movie Fight Club. We see it, alive and well, in Ivy League schools, investment banks, and consulting firms.

However, for the most part, there’s a new kid in town. One who’s more sensual, free-spirited, and conscious-driven. She attends TED conferences and film festivals, updates her Tumblr and Twitter feed, directs videos, cooks meals, and loves all types of music—even country.

Meet the Entrepreneurial Kid.

He’s the son of accountants who is obsessed with doing something that aligns with his “passions”. She’s the daughter of lawyers who rejects the fact that she’d be a great lawyer so she can pursue something more “authentic”. He’s the business-school student with a conscience who realizes that, whereas his parents had pursued money, he is destined to strive for “something more”

(What’s something more? Meaning? Love? Art?)

All of those and none of those things: He wants to Change The World.

The Entrepreneurial Kid can be illustrated through the descriptions of a couple of my friends. My buddy Zack enjoys yoga, travel, food, reading, making music and, of course, ideating and brainstorming businesses. He spreads himself so thin that he never delves deep into one thing—he’s still scrambling for the ”passion” to which he can dedicate his life. Always upbeat, he ends every e-mail with Have a great day, even if he checks it right before he goes to sleep—which he does almost every night. He measures his happiness by the quality of his experiences, as opposed to, say, his salary or his accomplishments—two clear measurements of the Organizational Kid. Nevertheless, one in his company gets the feeling that Zack is just…restless: Something’s missing.

My friend Jeff, another Entrepreneurial Kid, fervently preaches that the way to change the world is to, well, start a business and change the world—and you’ve done so whether you’ve created the next Google or the next Angry Birds—by…creating jobs. Exactly how you’ve changed the world is unclear, but, for Jeff’s purposes, such analysis is irrelevant. And thus, at any rate, he’s preparing to create the next big thing: His shelf overflows with the business book canon; his google reader contains over 100 blogs. He invokes Steve Jobs like religious people quote Jesus. He attends conferences frequently, tweeting from the sidelines. He spends hours on his inbox, sending hundreds of e-mails a day. He’s just 18 years old.

I’m with both Zack and Jeff at Start Up Weekend, an Entrepreneurial convention and a virtual Mecca for like-minded enthusiasts. A scrawny twenty-year old Indian kid gives the keynote speech. Apparently, he’s somehow made it easier for companies to advertise their products to gamers. His company just raised a couple million dollars, and now he’s telling us, in curse-ridden half-sentences, his life story (his first crush, his rebellious phase, his broken finger), and suggesting that we, too, can become like him in the future.

He ends with the following: “We’re all here because we care about things bigger than ourselves” The room erupts in applause. “We want to change the world. If we didn’t, we’d all take jobs at Goldman Sachs.” Some people applause, others stop to ponder the statement—but only for a few seconds.

***

Entrepreneurship and the “entrepreneurial mindset” -- the concept of thinking like an entrepreneur, whether you’re a student, employee, or employer – has been spreading like wildfire. Entrepreneurial incubators, educational programs, and related-events have been sprouting across the country. Entrepreneurship has been hailed the answer to the country’s economic woes. A cultural ethos of “forge your own path” and “create your own job” has pervaded college campuses across the country. This ethos didn’t come from nowhere: It’s a logical backlash to the financial crisis, modern corporate culture, and the lack of meaning and fulfillment of the jobs therein. It’s also, to be sure, a cultural response to the deification of Steve Jobs, the philosophies of conscious companies such as Tom’s Shoes and Kickstarter, and the romantic notions of entrepreneurship depicted in The Social Network.

Unsurprisingly, the entrepreneurial mindset is not without its critics. A New Yorker profile of Peter Thiel—a successful entrepreneur and investor—disparaged the approach, referring to it as childish, naive, and privileged. Other critics claim that, in encouraging everyone to think like an entrepreneur, we’re diluting the term. Our parents were entrepreneurial and they didn’t run around bragging about it—they simply did what they needed to do to survive.

I’m not sympathetic to this critique. The Organizational Kid was happily submissive and morally complacent. The transition into the Entrepreneurial Kid, while it has its faults, is an overall positive. Trying to simulate environments to revitalize the behaviors and habit that helped us in the past to not only survive but also flourish is a difficult but worthwhile endeavor. So I feel that, as long as it comes from a good place, overcompensating can be expected.

Other detractors have criticized the movement for an entirely different reason: They say that we have a surplus of people making useless stuff. A Newsweek article claimed that we might in fact have “a startup bubble in which too many weak ideas find funding and every kid dreams of being the next Mark Zuckerberg.” Some entrepreneurs have echoed these sentiments: For example, Jason Fried, co-founder of 37 Signals, challenged other entrepreneurs to think about how their products affect people in Mississippi. Peter Thiel himself concurred with Friedman, lamenting that “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”

But “at least they’re trying to improve the world”, the New Yorker Profile concluded, as though such an effort is merely a consolation. While the entrepreneurial mindset has good intentions, the piece implies, it’s misguided and outlandish. Such a shift, though, is nothing short of seismic: The Organization Kid didn’t even pretend to have convictions or beliefs, outside of satisfying others. The Entrepreneurial Kid, by contrast, is drenched with a desire for freedom, flexibility, and genuine change. We know we have problems and we want to fix them; we want a better world than our parents gave us—something’s missing and we’ll work very, very hard -- on our own terms -- to enact the change we seek.

Motive, though, is probably never enough. As the quote goes: “The road to hell was paved with good intentions.”

We’ve shifted our mindsets from material success to personal success. But in some ways, we’re still not thinking critically or independently. We still succumb to an early professionalism and a careerist approach at the expense of intellectual rigor and emotional development. Kids like Zack and Jeff are still so busy that they don’t read enough – especially the classics – or spend extended time with their friends, or wander, or, once in a while, relax.

It’s disorienting to see so many Entrepreneurial Kids focus solely on building things without evaluating the actual—direct and indirect—effects of their product.

Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, changed the world—but did he do so for the better? I believe that he did, but the point here is that the Entrepreneurial Kid rarely raises such questions. Every entrepreneur believes that what’s good for his or her company is good for the world, and it doesn’t seem that anyone questions such arithmetic.

Which is ridiculous, because entrepreneurs such as Thiel and Hoffman first met as intellectuals at Stanford—and their later business ideas evolved from their ideological ones. College is not the place to send 200 e-mails a day—you have the rest of your life to do that. Acquire a holistic education: read the classics, invest in relationships, and explore, experiment. Think like a kid and imagine all the cool products but also think like an adult and know that life is very, very tough for many other people. Don’t be so impatient and self-absorbed, obsessed with finding your “passion” and “meaning” that you miss it staring you right in the face.

Holden Caulfield, after all, may have been an entrepreneur in today’s world, but he would have never been an entrepreneurial kid.

Undoubtedly, this shift in mindset is transformative, but we need another evolution—we need a new Kid. One who reads Plato and Steve Blank. One who puts as much attention to his friends as he does his career plans. One who writes blog posts and hand-written letters; One who’s wired but also takes internet breaks,; One who spends time with nature, with herself, with a loved one, sometimes just letting the time go by, and seeing where it takes them. And a new kid who understands the difference between changing the world and changing your world, and has the ability to recognize the ethical and intellectual jostling involved.

Think about it.

Wisdom From the Youth on my Birthday

2012-02-12T20:27:00.000-08:00

For my birthday last year, I asked adults for reflections -- in either paragraph or haiku form -- on whether they regretted anything they did or *didn't* do when they were 21. Here were some of their answers.

This year, for my 22nd birthday, I'm asking my friends under 22 -- who are no less wiser than the people I asked last year -- to give me the gift of answering the following:

If you are under 22, what is one thing you hope you'll do or do better when you're 22? Or, put differently, what is one thing you will regret *not* having done by the time you turn 22? (Bonus points for Haiku!). Some answers are below:

On another note, Thank You to all who made my birthday incredible.

***

still close with old friends

doing hot shit in the bay

because I want to

Secrets leave us here

Kept inside they leave us chained
Honesty prevails

- pull off some crazy shit with friends that I will never forget I did in college

- graduate having a solidified philosophy for the moment (i.e. aware that it will likely change as I grow) that can really guide me in my decisions and purpose

I really hope to have taken a BIG risk by age 22. Life is too short to play it safe all the time and sometimes the biggest risks have the biggest payoffs. By 22, I want to have say I took a chance on something because I truly believe in it and whether it pays off or not, I have done it. If I haven't taken a risk by age 22, I think I will feel like I am selling myself short

Meet a great girl that means a lot to me

Spend as much of my college time having the time of my life (whatever that means)

Figure out what I want to do when I graduate

Meet as many amazing people as possible

Travel more of the world

Workout at least 3-4 days a week consistently

Maintain connections with the friends you have that mean most to me.

Lastly, spend this summer doing something very meaningful for my life, whether that be an internship or traveling or meeting someone great.

All in all just live it big. I know you do so I'm not too worried.

Before I am 22, I would like to make some mistakes and emerge stronger and more "in touch" with myself. Maybe that means not thinking about what I want to do before I'm 22, or 30, 35 but living more completely in the present.

I don't think that coming of age is something that changes who I am or my priorities. I think a person can always become a better person. Everyday we learn and everyday we change. By the time I'm 22, I hope I have been able to execute an idea full throttle that truly benefits the world.

I've come to a point where I've learned that life just knows best. It just brings what you should be getting at that moment (not always the same as what you want to get). So I don't really set goals for myself anymore. Right now, I trust life enough and go wherever life takes me. And it has taken me to many places. So that's how I live now. No goals. Things will get done when they get done. If they don't, they're not meant to be. And if you'd push me for a goal, here's my one and only: to be happy.

When I am 22, I hope that I will focus more on the present. Attempting to predict the future or analyzing the past often detracts from living in the present. Mindfulness mitigates external pressures to the contrary. Although these practices yield some value, finding a healthy balance between focusing on today versus tomorrow or yesterday seems beneficial.

The Real Conversation

2012-02-08T10:32:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago, Obama came to campus and spoke about the importance of making higher education more affordable. He mentioned nothing about improving its quality. I wrote the following as a piece for Consider Magazine.

***

In his speech in Ann Arbor a few weeks ago, President Barack Obama stressed the importance of making higher education more accessible and affordable for more Americans. My qualms lie not in what he said, but in what he didn’t.

Making higher education more affordable is commendable—and a no-brainer. But the president made no mention of improving quality, a topic of much contention that merits equal attention. In the last year, higher education has bore the scrutiny of many critics, ranging from wealthy entrepreneurs, such as Peter Thiel, to dissatisfied college graduates, such as Michael Ellsberg, to even college professors, such as Richard Arum.

Last year Peter Thiel caused quite a stir when, after predicting a bubble in higher education, he initiated a fellowship that granted 20 students under 20 years old $100,000 under the sole condition that they eschew college in favor of pursuing their own business venture. Author Michael Ellsberg echoed Thiel’s sentiments regarding a bubble in higher education, claiming that college doesn’t make people smarter—it just happens that smart people attend college. He compared it to the sport of basketball: tall people play basketball, but playing basketball doesn’t make you any taller. What college actually does, he says, is make you feel like you learned much, but, as many other people are trying to prove, you could have learned just as much — and saved a lot more money — in a non-university setting. Professor Arum, in his book Academically Adrift, also lamented the quality of higher education, citing self-executed studies that revealed a lack of student development during college in critical thinking and problem solving skills. Students, it seems, are leaving college with a degree and an expanded circle of friends, but little more.

These criticisms above are only a few of the gripes that comprise the current ideological climate in higher education today. If there is, in fact, a bubble, Obama addressed the first part—tuition costs are too expensive; but he didn’t address the second—college quality has not risen to match current prices.

We need to have a conversation about higher education, one that isn’t confined to whether students should attend college. Such a conversation should explore what learning means in a 21^st century economy, when, on average, students won’t work in the same field in which what they major, they’ll switch careers three times, and they’ll need to learn the habits and skills necessary for navigating an unpredictable future. Such a conversation will analyze what and how students should learn to prepare for such an economy, and how higher education can implement such preparation affordably—and effectively.

Students used to train for the unknown by developing analytical skills—we referred to this as learning how to think well. In today’s increasingly complex world, where we are constantly reinventing ourselves, we have to learn how to create our own opportunities, how to adapt to our surroundings—now it’s more like learning how to live well.

Obama could have achieved much during his visit by challenging Michigan students to become the future leaders our country so desperately needs right now. He could have provided us with a narrative for what we should aim to do here—develop valuable skill sets, the entrepreneurial mind set, an intellectual curiosity, and a strong moral compass—in addition to the usual narratives fed to us.

If I were Obama, I would have said something similar to the following: college grants you the opportunity to focus on exploring and experimenting, building relationships, and preparing yourself intellectually, physically, and emotionally for a fulfilling future. During these four years, you aren’t responsible for much other than your personal growth. This is the ultimate investment in your human capital. I would have reminded us that it’s not the end of the world if we don’t procure an internship this summer; that we’re defined by more than our major, our GPA, and our first job; that our growth occurs inside and outside the classroom, in textbooks and in great books, in our group projects and in our relationships.

Such a conversation can be nebulous, uncomfortable, and even threatening to some. Controlling costs is one thing, but improving education quality is something else entirely. Some people wouldn’t know where to start. Others have an interest in maintaining the status quo and avoiding the topic altogether. Others still are disgruntled and would rather reform from the outside. In the long run, though, improving our existing higher education institutions – making a long-term investment our human capital — may be one of the best investments we can make.

Therefore, before we can race to the top in higher education, we need to address where we are going and how we should train to get there—in other words, what and how we should learn to prosper in a 21^st-century economy and lifestyle.

More Than a Bullet Point

2012-02-02T09:25:00.000-08:00

From my recent column in the New Student Union

***

You are more than your GPA; you’re more than your test scores; and you’re more than your résumé. You have beliefs: convictions that guided your past decisions and shall guide your future ones. You’ve had experiences: work, travel, volunteer; you have a portfolio that demonstrates your talents and capabilities. And, above all, you have a story — how you became you, what you’ve done and where you want to go — that can’t be captured from a bullet point.

So, when prospective recruiters evaluate students solely on their bullet points, they aren’t performing due diligence.

A high GPA demonstrates that a student can perform any activity at a high level; they’ve likely mastered test-preparation, writing a stellar 5-paragraph essay and, generally, satisfying the evaluator. These are valuable skills, to be sure, but there are other valuable skills that aren’t manifested from a GPA. What about your character — grit? What about your initiative? In other words, can you pursue your own project and persevere without constant feedback? And then there are the intangibles; prospective recruiters should want to know how creative, fun and socially intelligent you are, no? Or how loyal, how respectful and how team-oriented you are, right? In the bullet-point model, though, such valuable information falls through the cracks. And although employers and colleges know this — that they covet skills undetectable on a GPA and résumé — their proposed remedy, the job interview, falls short; students still game the system by memorizing answers to often-asked questions. Such a contrived, short interaction fails to paint an adequate picture of a person.

This narrow emphasis on résumés, then, results in an inefficient market. The poor test takers — which are often the creative, entrepreneurial and super curious types — get shafted in the job search and college application processes.

So what? The problems above, some might say, are minor drawbacks when compared to the résumé’s strengths — namely, convenience and practicality. And an evaluation system, after all, is never perfect. So why should we care to improve it?

Here’s an even more important reason: Students tend to excessively concentrate on that in which they are evaluated, and, in today’s hyper competitive world, that’s true now more than ever. As a result, students focus almost exclusively on their GPA and résumé; and it’s well known that those two things aren’t always — or even regularly — synonymous with learning. Ideally, GPA would align with what’s best for students — that’s when teaching to the test works like a charm — but, unfortunately, too often it just doesn’t.

Consider when students take easy classes to bolster their GPA; or when they solely care what’s on the test, even though they’ll forget it minutes afterwards. Or when they accept name brand internships, no matter what type of work they’ll do; or when they engage in extra curricular activities merely for the leadership recognition, even if they aren’t motivated or benefiting personally. Such a careerist approach prevents students from wandering, exploring and experimenting, which, if they don’t do now, between ages 18-22 — then when? Commitment is valuable, true and a good practice to develop, sure, but young adulthood is the time, especially in college, to experiment and discover which endeavors are worth committing to in the first place.

These endeavors end up shaping you. Your personal projects culminate in discovering your strengths and weaknesses, your likes and dislikes. In today’s world, the résumé gods — those who lack, curiosity, creativity, and personal conviction — will have neither the abilities nor the drive to solve our common problems — let alone their own. They will consistently chase approval until they receive it from everyone but themselves. Aim to get great grades, sure, but don’t do so at the expense of your own personal growth. Try to synchronize those objectives as much as possible.

Shifting how we evaluate students, however, is the job of educators. A recent article in GOOD Magazine, by Education Correspondent Liz Dwyer concurred, noting the importance of more holistic evaluations.

“Many educators are looking to take a more holistic approach to figuring out what students really know and can do. That often means using portfolios, a purposeful collection of a student’s best work, to assess the way students demonstrate proficiency in a subject.”

That means avenues that enable you to share your portfolio: your beliefs, your experiences, your skill-sets — in effect, your stories, will become increasingly more important.

This conversation is, in the end, not just about making the market more efficient. It’s about how we evaluate human worth and how we reshape the incentives to promote a more holistic type of development — one that can’t be captured in a bullet point. Undoubtedly, a résumé presents valuable, necessary information, but, on it’s own, it’s incomplete.

You are more than a bullet point — that is, of course, unless you only care about your bullet points.

Why, then, do we continue to evaluate talent by these statistics which only reward one type of learner and reveal only a fraction of who we are?

Because, I presume, it’s convenient. A standard number given by a standard test is to continue the easy way. This could be mere laziness, it could be practicality, it could be a bit of both; I couldn’t tell you. All I can say is that, for the reasons mentioned above, it’s worth contemplating a change.

There are a couple ways to approach this problem. One method is to acknowledge the limits of statistical evaluations — and eliminate the use of them entirely. We have a unique obsession with trying to “rank” everything, and, while it may work in sports when the objective is so clear cut (win the game), it won’t work as easily in schools because evaluating progress for education’s objectives — the students’ development — is more difficult, if not impossible, to measure. There are too many variables that come into play when developing “life-long learning.” As a result, evaluations should be conducted, not by measly numbers, but by seasoned veterans who instinctively know which attributes to look for.

The second option is to go in the opposite direction. Opponents of statistical evaluations claim that you can’t quantify a teacher’s love, or her effects over time, or the quality of a students’ character. Other schools, however, think differently. A piece in The New York Times Magazine references the Riverdale Country School, which incorporates “character” evaluations into a GPA. These included a combination of subjective descriptions and objective test-taking. At the least, they’re displaying the importance of character growth — so students are acting accordingly, and so it seems, that these habits will be ingrained.

This is not unlike what happened in baseball, as portrayed in Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball. The seasoned veterans made a plethora of poor judgments in evaluating players, but they didn’t trust the statistics. The problem, though, wasn’t the use of statistics; it was merely the poor use of statistics!

A nice middle ground could work — a combination of subjective and statistical evaluations — similar to what they’re doing in Riverdale. This is vastly important, because isn’t only about altering how we evaluate students. Indeed, it’s also about reincenvitizing students to strive for a holistic and humanistic education.

Column: Why I'm Making My Own Syllabus

2012-01-17T07:20:00.000-08:00

This semester, I'll be writing columns for The New Student Union. Here's my first one:

***

I did it again: I just spent 5 days memorizing 50 esoteric concepts scattered over 500 note cards. Each day cramming for my Extreme Weather class cost me hundreds of dollars. Learning the intricacies of cumulonimbus clouds — and I’ve already forgotten them — over the course of the semester has cost me thousands.

Freed from the fetters, I sprint to the classic I’ve been yearning to read. Now that exams are over, I can actually learn something: I can read one of the greatest works ever written; I can spend a day with a mentor; I can work on a project with my friends. I hurry, suspecting that I only have a few days to learn before class starts.

Has it really come to this?

***

Last year, Peter Thiel hailed Higher Education as the third great bubble, and, putting his money where his mouth was, initiated a fellowship that granted 20 students under 20 years old $100,000 under the sole condition that they do not go to college. Students, he believes, would learn more from starting a business, pursuing their own learning plans and having access to successful mentors than from sitting in classes that constrain and stifle creativity.

The fellowship came after a large and growing litany of complaints against Higher Education. Some proponents, thinking practically, claim that students learn virtually zero real world skills, such as financial literacy, business basics or applying for jobs, within the realm of the university system. Others, thinking personally and holistically, claim that students aren’t encouraged to express or develop their creativity; they’re not reflecting or discovering what they believe in — and, instead, they spend much of their time jumping through hoops and regurgitating ancient and antiquated material.

In short, not only are students learning little about how to make a living, students aren't learning squat about — they aren’t debating, experimenting or exploring — how to live a life worth living.

And, of course, there’s a hefty price tag involved, too, which, combined with the other factors, has caused many to re-think their educational paths. DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, a book by Anya Kamenetz, chronicles how worldwide, students are attempting to simulate structures such as a learning community, a skills portfolio and personalized syllabus that — once exclusive to university students — are now available to anyone with an Internet connection.

And yet, while it’s fun and empowering to forge one’s own learning path, people who attempt to do so quickly and forcefully realize that formal education provides three structural mechanisms without which learning becomes more difficult.

The first structure is community: It’s difficult to recreate the all-encompassing living and learning milieu that college provides. The second is feedback: Without a professor and grades, who do students have to keep them accountable — not only to monitor their work but also to evaluate their progress and offer recommendations for improvement? And the third is credibility: Perhaps the most valuable service that college offers is its universal stamp of approval — that is, a diploma — to the working world. This structure, too, can be simulated, but it requires remarkable talent and a proactive disposition.

The difficulty in recreating these three structures has prevented many top students from diving into personalized learning, no matter how attractive the future seems behind the present piles of note cards, problem sets and debt.

In other words, Higher Education may have substantial problems, but, for now, it’s the best we’ve got.

***

That’s how things look from my vantage point, at any rate. In terms of actual learning, I believe that college doesn’t need a major overhaul — it just needs some tweaking.

It could start with the social dynamics of the classroom, or lack thereof: In fact, I barely get a chance to develop relationships with my classmates or professors. I realized this after attending a Start Up Weekend, where, by speaking at length with experienced employers, and by spending two consecutive days on a complex project with my team, I learned more and developed more lasting relationships than I ever have in an entire semester-long course.

Another element that could be tweaked is the depth of subject matter. I will forget 90 percent of what I learn — which is OK, as alumni proudly tell us, because the life lessons will not come from what we learn, but in the work ethic required to ace our exams. (How intellectually comforting). If most of the information is irrelevant, why not shift the paradigm from “know-what” to “know-how”; why not, for example, instead of taking an accounting course, take a three day accounting retreat where you soak in its practical applications and actively simulate said practices in groups, developing friendships and mentorships in the process, rather than impersonally and inefficiently — in installments of one-and-a-half hours, two days a week — learning, or in some cases, memorizing, significantly more information than is useful?

The university structure is what it is, and change has always been slow-from the top-down. So I’m going rogue, within the context of a university community, and experimenting from the bottom-up.

I’m creating my own syllabus, equipped with reading lists, entrepreneurship projects, mentors, a board of advisors and a blog. I’ll be shadowing and interviewing and experimenting and reading and writing and, hopefully, learning much about myself and about the world along the way. And, in putting myself under the microscope, I’ll be putting Higher Education under the microscope, asking questions such as these: What should the future of Higher Education look like? What does it mean to prepare oneself for a 21st century economy and lifestyle? How can such preparation be taught — or learned, rather — effectively, affordably and in a manner that’s accessible to the masses?

The Future(?) of Education Pt II

2012-01-15T07:52:00.000-08:00

In the future, we combine what's worked for centuries with what works today.

First, spiritual practice – or at least the practice of meditation – has been known to have calming and clarifying effects. Students begin the day with their own choice of practice.

Secondly, we’ve learned that we have an instinctive desire to master a skill or a topic that we find valuable. So, when students reach age 14 – and prior to that they acquire a well-rounded education in different academic subjects – they start Deliberate Practice training. Through this, they not only master a specific skill – and they can switch which skill they’re working on a couple times -- but they also develop habits of self-discipline and hard-work.

Thirdly, we’ve learned that the student-centered method is most effective. Student engagement requires student interest. And most adolescents aren’t going to be intrinsically interested by a grade -- they will be interested in the subject when it relates to their lives. While mentors//facilitators – formerly known as “teachers” -- help define the "map", students are at the drivers seat of their own education. They develop independent learning contracts for self-designed projects and find mentors to monitor their progress.

Fourthly, action-weekends have become increasingly successful. While some choose to spend a weekend on their own, others join events hosed by community members for educational and entertainment purposes.

Fifth, and lastly, we’ve come to realize how prominent the connection is between relationships and learning, and, in learning from the success of co-ops and military organizations, traditional schools have required that students learn and live in the same environment.

Summers are spent traveling, or expanding upon their previous topics.

In the future, we place much more importance in the cultivation of human capital -- and we have a much more holistic and nuanced view of it.

The Future(?) Of Education

2012-01-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

Sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, students meditate on a mat. It’s bright and early and there is a man clad in a robe who, though he’s leading the session, isn’t saying anything. In fact, not a word is spoken for over 30 minutes: the only audible sounds are the contemplative breaths – in…and out… -- of the students as they mentally, emotionally, and physically prepare for the day. One student focuses on God; another on her loved ones; and another on subduing his evolutionary drive to propagate genes with every female that crosses his mind (Good luck).

Relaxed, cleansed, and prepared, the students grab their breakfast. They’re encouraged to focus on their food, how delicious it is, how lucky they are to eat it.

Shortly afterwards a gong echoes—It’s deliberate practice time. From 9-12 everyday, kids 14 and older enter the Pursuit of Mastery course, where they spend three hours developing, refining, mastering a skill set of their choice – mathematics, music, writing, art, science, etc – by developing the pattern recognitions that come with thousands of hours of smart work. If appropriate, they incorporate other academic subjects into their training.

Deliberate Practice is honored by a few words from the Headmaster, some music from volunteers, and a scrumptious meal (Imagine a feast straight out of Hogwarts).

Following a short rest, students have SDP (Self-Designed Projects). They select their project, their team, and their methodology accomplishing their project. They find mentors, either through their school, their community, or the internet. Although projects are open-ended, they’re rigorously monitored and progress is tracked weekly. Every few months – barring extenuating circumstances – students start a new project. By the time students graduate, they will have done the following: written a book/thesis, played on a sports team, started a business, traveled, worked with a charity, performed a stand up comedy routine, taken a public speaking course, and mastered a game or subject.

At 6 PM, students are done for the day and have the night for themselves. Perhaps they’d like to continue their projects, or engage in Dead Poets Society-esque activities, or do something else entirely.

Weekends consist of a variety of events, hosted by students, community members, or the school itself. Studies will have concluded that Start Up weekend type events – where you delve into specific subjects for long and consecutive periods of time (2 days straight) – are incredibly efficient, effective, and fun. Thus there will be two-day events that simulate starting a business, teaching a class, making a mini-film, working in congress, just to name a few, as well as the traditional camping, sports, and travel expeditions.

Welcome to the Future(?) of Education.

Great Love

2012-01-13T07:23:00.000-08:00

As the Butabi Brothers eloquently once asked, what is love?

Beats me. You read all this Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (and then brag about reading them…) and you learn that love is twisted, arbitrary, circumstantial. Out of our control. It is, ultimately, the most important decision we make in our lives (who to love), and yet we are completely unequipped, evolutionarily speaking, to make that decision.

God’s (or the Odd’s) big Russian roulette.

This is true, of course, if you believe that love is a feeling, and you’ve been raised on romantic comedies, the books romantic comedies were based on, and believe that the world exists to serve you.

If instead, you believe in love as an action, then as long as you actively love you will always “feel” it. A professor of mine said that he a saw a lot of sense in arranged marriages. Since an arranged marriage begins with zero expectations – I imagine you hope your partner doesn’t smell bad -- everything only goes upwards from there. When you get married at the peak of your (romantic) love for someone, you have all these expectations that it is always going to be “passionate” and always going to “just work”, which is hard because it’s hard to sustain that as people get comfortable.

(And, this analysis could, I must say, very well be self-rationalizing. (Well, of course it’s self-rationalizing: I’m a human) No, but I mean I could be doing so consciously: I could be rationalizing the sudden shocks of intuition I have that tell me to “be single” by saying either that I have a) a phobia to commitment (right now) or that I am merely b) misinterpreting what Great Love is).

There is only one way to find out.

***

Zooming outwards, Great Love, I agree, is not just something you do with a significant other—but also with your parents, friends, and the people you run into everyday. I’ve been trying to get better at this for a few years now. I wrote my manifesto the other day, in what was an earnest -- but also a slightly contrived -- attempt at self-definition, and I started by writing that there are no concretely quantifiable Truths. We’ve been told maxims from adults with more experience when really they’ve only become more experienced in failure—and less willing to experiment. This is both existentially scary (what is Truth?) and liberating (we get to decide).

But then I hit backspace. There is, in my opinion, one (near) absolute universal Truth: Love. (I’ll leave the Great aside because love is merely a word if it is not Great.) Here’s why:

“It’s the only thing that persists through the piles of shit the world chucks at us. We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond: Loving is the best response, because when you love you encourage people to be their best selves. And that person, comfortable in their own skin, encourages another to be their best self. And so on. Active Love isn’t, as is commonly asserted, submissive or sacrificial, at least IMO. The statement “Love is putting someone else’s wants/needs above yours” awakens the Ayn Rand in me, the one I am slightly uncomfortable with but am consciously unwilling to dispense with, not for reasons of self-preservation, but rather self-actualization, which, I think, is one of the greatest things you can do for others: When you’re confident, hard working, and virtuous, others are encouraged to follow your example. It’s true, loving people sometimes involves putting their desires above yours – our friends will need crying shoulders, late night rides, and people to “show up”, regardless of circumstance. But, for the most part, I think of love as two people sharing the best parts of themselves – not as a mutual sacrifice so that no one advances, no one is actualized. That is not loving. That is laziness. When love becomes a sacrifice – unless it’s a love out of commitment (e.g family) -- it’s time to love other people: Great Love should be empowering, and not a hindrance."

Zooming back in, we find that being a Great Lover is just an extension of the Great Love that we exude everyday. We don’t expect our friendships, family, and casual relationships to be always passionate and easy, yet why do we not expect to encounter similar roadblocks with our significant others?

And to come full circle: Great Love, like anything Quality, is the ultimate response to your stimuli, to your surroundings. That no matter what happens, poverty, death, or mere mediocrity, you’re going to smile, you’re going to listen, you’re going to dance (or freestyle, if that, for some reason, happened to be your thing).

And this practice, like others, involves daily practice: Visualization, action, habit-formation. Lather, rinse, repeat.

***

All you – I -- need is (Great) Love. That is probably what the Butabi Brothers had in mind.

A Good Listener

2012-01-12T17:05:00.000-08:00

IMO,

1. understands the difference between listening and understanding, and strives to do both.

2. patiently comprehends and, though makes internal notes, does not verbalize judgments.

3. understands the importance of "re-verbalizing" what the speaker has said, in order to hear it in conjunction with simply thinking it.

4. learns what values the other person holds and prescribes accordingly -- if asked. Note: This last part depends on what you sense the other person is looking for. Sometimes they may be looking to just vent; other times while may crave direct and poignant feedback.

Thanks to JoHanna for helping me work this through.

Quick Thoughts on the Syllabus

2012-01-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

Some selected thoughts from bloggers, professors, and mentors on my syllabus. Thank you very much for your generosity:

"I'd read Po Bronson's "What Should I do with my life" or something in that genre at the outset of the semester to have a template for your final writing project (which by the way has an awkward sentence "book those personalizing. I'd add some "non classics' to your reading list. Maybe the Jobs biography, the new Kahnemann book, I don't know."

"I especially think that you will learn the most from shadowing and interviewing people and that is definitely something that is much easier to do as a college student. People are definitely more willing to share their "secrets" with you when you seem young and harmless. "

"I've just taken the briefest look, but boy would I bet on you! and also that you'll derive more from your self-designed education than from a standard university-based one. Do keep a log of what you've done"

"Sometimes making things explicit can have the opposite desired effect. I used to keep a log of how far I ran, swam, biked and walked each day. It very quickly became about how many boxes I checked and not about anything else. Just a thought. "

"I note, music excepted, that you have no part of your syllabus devoted to making things and you have a deep interest in education. Making things is not much a part of formal education these days, sadly, almost no part and often no part at all. This is an incalculable loss. To make a thing, a three dimensional thing with weight and heft and of materials which make their own demands, is a path to learning and, maybe, wisdom like no other. You may want to consider getting your hands dirty somehow. Perhaps by making a cigar box guitar and then playing it or finding enough parts to assemble a bicycle and then riding it. I'm confident that doing such will inform your philosophy in myriad ways."

"Your syllabus is fascinating. It's also a lot to take in; it's evident you have been thinking a great deal about your education and how to construct a productive self-education. More than anything else, I'm sure you will learn from the process of paying attention to the whole process...Your idea about sleeping in different places is also intriguing... if you're attentive to how the experiment affects you -- your thinking, learning, dreaming and creativity -- I'm sure you'll get something out of it"

"Honestly, this doesn't seem very focused. Anyone who uses email and social media during the day writes 1000 words a day. And reading "great" writing could be anything -- microsoft manuals are great technical writing"

In response to my question about what that person would do if they were designing a syllabus for a semester:

"I don't know. I'm not sure why the question is important. Why not just decide what you want to learn and learn it?"

Why "Teach A Man How To Fish" is Outdated

2012-01-11T07:16:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from the New Cultures of Learning:

"Many educators, for example, consider the principle underlying the adage, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime,” to represent the height of educational practice today. Yet it is hardly cutting edge. It assumes that there will always be an endless supply of fish to catch and that the techniques for catching them will last a lifetime. And therein lies the major pitfall of the twenty-first century’s teaching model—namely, the belief that most of what we know will remain relatively unchanged for a long enough period of time to be worth the effort of transferring it. Certainly there are some ideas, facts, and concepts for which this holds true. But our contention is that the pool of unchanging resources is shrinking, and that the pond is providing us with fewer and fewer things that we can even identify as fish anymore."

Excerpt from DIY U:

"Well, now the world is changing too fast, and the need is growing too much, for institutions to keep up. Scientists say we have less than ten years to reinvent how we get energy, how we get around, and howe we make things if we don't want to collapse from the effects of global warming. And to do that, we as a species also have to find better ways of communicating, making decisions and understanding and weighing each other's needs.

No one person knows how to do this; it requires a new synthesis of the wisdom of the ancients and cutting-edge discoveries. Our best hope is to get better at empowering individuals to find answers for themselves. In other words, "Forget about giving the guy a fish, or teaching him how to fish, either. Teach him how to teach himself, and he'll always be able to acquire the skills he needs to find food, skills you haven't even thought of yet for things you didn't know you could eat.

Fishing itself, it happens, is a great example of this. Today, 90 percent of fish species are over-exploited. Fish farming is people’s fastest-growing source of food and will probably remain so until 2025, says James S. Diana of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The world needs people who can figure out new ways to repair the oceans and to find or grow renewable sources of food."

Inquiry-Based Education

2012-01-11T07:06:00.000-08:00

The New Culture of Learning, a book written by Professor John Seely Brown, in distinguishing between two types of knowledge, explicit and tacit knowledge, claims that we have strayed away from tacit knowledge, and now, more than ever, we need to return to it. First off, let’s define the two types of knowledge: Think of explicit knowledge as “know-what” and tacit knowledge as “know-how”. Knowing the rules of chess, for instance, is explicit knowledge, whereas knowing how to play the game at high level involves tacit knowledge. Notice that tacit and explicit knowledge are interdependent: you can’t play the game well without knowing the rules, and, by the same token, it doesn’t do much good if you know the rules but cannot play well.

Tacit knowledge is becoming increasingly important, Seely notes, due to the increasing amount of data that we’re forced to make sense of. We need to be able to synthesize it quicker, evaluate what’s important and what isn’t, and have the ability to develop relationships as our minds become more and more preoccupied. Schools, though, have missed the memo: They almost exclusively focus on transmitting explicit knowledge — facts, definitions, the stuff of memorization. Seely continues: “In a stable world, focusing on explicit knowledge perhaps made more sense, but in a more rapidly changing world, tacit knowledge becomes increasingly central to our ability to thrive.“

Schools need a return to tacit knowledge – the proverbial street smarts, the intangibles, the stuff of building relationships and cultivating wisdom. But, as Seely notes, “tacit knowledge cannot be taught – it can only be learned,…only if the environment is designed to do that.” This, perhaps, explains the reluctance to embrace tacit learning. How can you teach something that can only be learned?

Let’s ask a better question: How can we design an environment that fosters tacit learning?

For one, Seely mentions, you can shift the emphasis from finding the right answers, indeed, to asking the right questions. This paradigm places student at the center of learning. Inquiry-based education inherently relates the subject material to one’s interests; it accustoms the student to ambiguity; It makes him more creative, interesting, and, above all, it encourages and develops his curiosity. This is key: Writer Jim Collins credits his core competence as curiosity. Charlie Rose frequently interviews people who say that curiosity is the skill that separated them from the pack. David Brooks wrote a column titled the “Question-Driven Life”, which says that curiosity is not the means of a good life but is the good life itself -- that is,while some chase $ or fame, others – like him, for example – chase profound and burning questions.

What does this look like in schools? Well, from how I see things, there are three approaches: There’s the community model, where you relate whatever it is you’re doing to community develop projects. My friend runs the Brightmoor program, which connects students’ class work with community projects in Brightmoor, Detroit. A group of writing students, for instance, wrote a storyboard cookbook for the elderly. A group of aspiring music teachers, to provide another example, will instruct inner-city youth in basic music theory. One could imagine all sorts of creative and fun ways that students studying business, engineering, and the humanities, to name a few, could incorporate their skills into community-service projects.

There’s the entrepreneurship model, where you take whatever it is your learning and try to turn a profit from it. This could be producing a painting, novel, CD, film, service, product, depending on your interests and skill sets, and the trying to sell it. This builds, even if you never make a dime, practical and tangible skills and, in a very real sense, shows you what it’s like to make a buck.

And then there’s the self-designed model where, based on what you’re learning, you design a project of choice. What might this look like? In economics, for instance, you may perform research on the financial crisis and then design a media campaign to popularize Keynesian economics. Or for history, you may want to make a skit, a musical – I’d make a rap musical – simulating the Tudors, or Watergate, or the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Or for sociology, you may want to make a video on why men and women can’t be friends, or why friends with benefits never works.

These examples are very consistent with what’s known as Problem-based learning, in which students learn material in the context of solving a larger question or dilemma. In history, for example, you pose the question: is war justified? And then analyze those wars with that question in mind. In Public Policy you ask: When is Government at its best, and in what fields does it fail? And analyze policy decisions from there.

Here’s why these methods work: First, students are actively engaged and actually care about what their work. Both student and teacher know there’s a purpose behind it and are thereby invested in it. Second, students learn readily applicable and transferable skills. Serving your community, earning a dollar, and choosing and following through on self-designed projects are not only valuable experiences in and of themselves, they also demonstrate and develop your creativity, your curiosity, and your initiative. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it’s fun. These are largely social activities, which enable relationships to flourish.

Altucher's Thoughts on Education

2012-01-09T18:04:00.000-08:00

James Altucher, a book author who keeps a thoughtful, provocative, and profoundly honest blog, detailed 8 educational endeavors as alternatives to the traditional college path. These experiences include traveling the world, creating art, making people laugh, writing a book, working in charity, mastering a game, mastering a sport.

What's interesting about Altucher's piece is that it is less about college, indeed --

"Whenever I suggest “don’t send your kids to college” a lot of vey smart people invariably come back with the response, “well what else should they do.” And this amazes me. I guess its really hard to figure out what people of the ages 18-23 should do during the most vibrant, healthy years of their lives when they grow from being a child to an adult."

and more about what abilities an educated person should develop-- namely, 1) practical skills (making a living, mastering a game) 2) social experiences (playing sports, working in charity, starting a business) and 3) personal reflection (making art, writing a book).

Altucher's suggestions shouldn't merely be alternatives; they should be included in a holistic educational experience. Schools already offer some of them (e.g sports, art, charity). In the future, though, I'd like to see experiences such as writing a book, performing a stand up routine, starting a business, traveling the world, and mastering something rare and valuable, to name a few, as part of the normal educational experience, starting as early as high school. I'd wager that most adults would agree, in retrospect, that they would have enjoyed and gained much from undergoing these experiences during their adolescent years.

Living Well?

2012-01-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

In this recent Browser interview, Roman Krzaric, founding member of The School of Life, claims that there have been four main sources for wisdom on the art of living: religion, philosophy, psychology, and now, neuroscience. Krzaric thinks we'd be better off analyzing examples from history, and recommends reading Thoreau, Orwell, and Frankl, among others. Overall, I found the interview thought-provoking, inconsistent, and at times contradictory. Here are some quotes worth noting:

On what living well means:

It’s partly about confronting what people find difficult in their lives, and reducing human suffering on some level. To find ways to nurture our relationships, and give our lives deeper meaning. To try to deal with the practicalities of making a living, dealing with money and work and time. To think about what it means to be a creative person and to nurture the many sides of yourself.

On outrospection, as opposed to introspection:

In the 20th century we were obsessed with introspection – the idea that the way to find meaning in our lives is to look inside us, at our drives, motivations and priorities... In the 21st century we need to balance introspection with outrospection – the idea that the way to discover how to live is to discover how other people see the world, to put yourself in their shoes and see how they have pursued the art of living. When it comes to New Year, I think we need a healthy dose of outrospection to explore how others have gone about dealing with the dilemmas of everyday life, whether it’s how to find love or how to deal with family tensions or career change.

On why defining what living well means is increasingly more important today:

I think we’re in a state of flux. Many of these areas of life are undergoing change, and often rapid change because of technology. For example, the way we fall in love and make friends has been transformed by online networks and internet dating. There are new questions about how we spend the extra years that have been granted us, through medical technologies and public health. And there are questions about the nature of materialism and consumption.

On different types of love:

Today we have one word for love. We use that same word to sign an email – “lots of love” – yet we whisper “I love you” over a romantic meal. The Ancient Greeks were much more complex in the art of loving. They had one word, eros, for sexual love and sexual passion. They had another word, philia, for deep comradely friendship. Another word, pragma, was about the mature love between long-married couples – about giving love as well as receiving it, and compromise. There was agape, their concept of selfless love, which is where we got our word “charity”, from caritas which was the Latin translation of agape. And there was philautia, which is self-love – the idea that we need to nurture a healthy self-love. And the sixth kind is ludos, playful love. I think that nurturing these varieties of love is the way to lead a much more complex and deep emotional life. The idea of “all we need is love” – whether it’s Frankl or the Beatles or [psychiatrist] M Scott Peck – it’s not enough, it’s too simplistic an analysis. We need to be much more sophisticated in the art of loving, and that’s why we need to look to the past. I love this quote from Goethe: “He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living from hand to mouth.” So we need to go right back to Ancient Greece to find the wisdom for how to live today.

This is where I think Krzaric gets into trouble:

But what really comes out of these books, I think, is to treat life as an experiment. To take chances. To say things you’ve never said before, and to do things you’ve never done before. On some level every culture has come up with the idea that we need to seize the day – carpe diem. As the idea in Judaic thought goes: If not now, when? We need to recognise that life is preciously short and now is the moment to make that change – whether it is talking to your sister whom you haven’t spoken to in a decade, or handing in your resignation letter, or starting a community puppet theatre whether it works or not. Ultimately, if we don’t take those chances, and if we don’t sometimes fall down as well as stand up and thrive, we’re never going to live a life which is both deep and adventurous.

This advice is guilty of short.bursts.of.advice, the just-follow-your passion-fallacy, and a general lack of scientific theory (e.g regret aversion), which is unfortunate, because we've pushed the conversation way past what Krzaric proposes. I agree that history can provide valuable insights into living well -- I just hope we find something more substantial than Just do "it" already!

***

David Brooks distinguishes between two views of living well:

“There’s a debate in our culture about what really makes us happy, which is summarized by, on the one hand, the book “On the Road” and, on the other, the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The former celebrates the life of freedom and adventure. The latter celebrates roots and connections. Research over the past thirty years makes it clear that what the inner mind really wants is connection.”

Character in Education

2012-01-06T09:16:00.000-08:00

A few months ago Paul Tough wrote a terrific piece in the NYT (Thanks to my dear friend David Marcovitz for the Hat Tip). Here are a few things that struck me:

1) The article distinguishes between "moral character" and "performance character".

"In 2008, a national organization called the Character Education Partnership published a paper that divided character education into two categories: programs that develop “moral character,” which embodies ethical values like fairness, generosity and integrity; and those that address “performance character,” which includes values like effort, diligence and perseverance. The CARE program falls firmly on the “moral character” side of the divide, while the seven strengths that Randolph and Levin have chosen for their schools lean much more heavily toward performance character: while they do have a moral component, strengths like zest, optimism, social intelligence and curiosity aren’t particularly heroic; they make you think of Steve Jobs or Bill Clinton more than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi."

Here's what interesting: It's easy for students to believe in the importance of performance character; adopt these habits and you're more likely to become successful. Everyone wins.

Moral character, on the other hand, doesn't have such a tangible appeal. Encouraging moral character is like saying, be a good person, include and respect others, not because you'll benefit -- and you may not -- but rather, because if everyone acted in these ways, the world (we hope) would probably be a better place.

2) Talk about the use of a Hidden Curriculum:

"A month later, I returned to KIPP to visit Witter’s classroom. By that point in the school year, character language had permeated Infinity. Kids wore T-shirts with the slogan “Infinite Character” and Seligman’s 24 character strengths listed on the back. The walls were covered with signs that read “Got self-control?” and “I actively participate!” (one indicator for zest). There was a bulletin board in the hallway topped with the words “Character Counts,” where students filled out and posted “Spotted!” cards when they saw a fellow student performing actions that demonstrate character. (Jasmine R. cited William N. for zest: “William was in math class and he raised his hand for every problem.”)"

3) Kids aren't going through that much failure these days. It's not that they're being coddled -- they're working their asses off -- it's just that the work is inside a bubble, and students aren't allowed, let alone encouraged, to explore, make mistakes, and undergo the experiences that develop character.

When I asked Randolph to explain just what he thought Riverdale students were missing out on, he told me the story of his own scholastic career. He did well in boarding school and was admitted to Harvard, but when he got to college, he felt lost, out of step with the power-tie careerism of the Reagan ’80s. After two years at Harvard, Randolph left for a year to work in a low-paying manual job, as a carpenter’s helper, trying to find himself. After college, he moved for a couple of years to Italy, where he worked odd jobs and studied opera. It was an uncertain and unsettled time in his life, filled with plenty of failed experiments and setbacks and struggles. Looking back on his life, though, Randolph says that the character strengths that enabled him to achieve the success that he has were not built in his years at Harvard or at the boarding schools he attended; they came out of those years of trial and error, of taking chances and living without a safety net. And it is precisely those kinds of experiences that he worries that his students aren’t having.

***

Here's a thought: How much "grit" do you have if you can't put your 100% into a personal goal that doesn't have a grade attached to it? The evaluation for grit may be more accurate if you took grades away for a month, gave them the time to pursue what they're passionate about, and observed the results. One part of grit, I imagine, is the ability to perform A+ work, regardless of the subject; another part, I would argue, is the capability to pursue self-defined projects, without external pressures or evaluations. Because after all, for most of our lives, no one's watching us -- that is, except ourselves.

Real Life University: The (Rough) Syllabus

2012-01-05T18:05:00.000-08:00

Note: This is not "instead" of my University experience; This is a novel and, hopefully, rewarding experiment that I will undergo regardless of if I finish the 10 credits I need to graduate either this semester or during summer term.

***

We feel more accountable when we publicize our goals. With that in mind, I present a rough draft version of a syllabus, an intellectual exercise in and of itself. I will edit it as I experiment and tinker with the first theme, education, and as I consult friends and mentors.

Course Description: This is an experiment in self-education. I am personalizing my learning program to fit my goals – from what I want to learn & improve upon, to who I want to learn from and develop relationships with, and to how I learn best (which is by pursuing my own curiosities, solving interesting problems, and working with others).

What I want to improve in (i.e Subject Matter):

Become a better at and focus on my writing

Sub goals: become a better speaker, conversationalist, and listener

Learn the ins and outs of the startup world on the job.
Become more knowledgeable about education, philosophy, and wisdom broadly defined

How I will do this (i.e. Method):

Writing:

Write 1000 words a day towards columns and blog posts (no e-mails), six days a week
Audit John Rubadeau's writing course and collaborate with other writers.
Read The Classics and a couple books on writing mechanics

Entrepreneurship: Work at a Start Up (truApp), interview and shadow entrepreneurs + VCs.

Knowledge: Having a different theme each month. These will include interviewing + shadowing + writing + discussing with people about these topics.

I welcome all questions, feedback, and inquiries. Feel free to e-mail me at Erik.Torenberg@gmail.com. A big thank you for those who have already expressed their feedback and support.

This is what the Syllabus will look like (for now):

January: Education (Pedagogy/Philosophy/Economics)

Questions: What are the current challenges in K-12 & Higher Education, why do they exist, and what does the future look like?

What is the goal of public education and what has it been historically? How do students learn? What are productive dynamics between teachers and students? What makes a great teacher, anyway, and how can that be quantified? What philosophies and considerations underpin different curriculum designs? What can the Greeks teach us?

What are my goals through my education? What's important to consider when designing my syllabus and learning environment? What are some tips for being an Autodidact within a larger learning community?

People to shadow: Teachers + Professors I admire @ University of Michigan and local high school

People to speak with: Home Schoolers. Eduventurist. rEDesign. UnCollege. Dept of Higher Education. Seek Feedback from friends + mentors on my syllabus.

***

February: Entrepreneurship

Questions: What’s involved in starting, running, and growing a business? What do investors evaluate when evaluating a company? What should entrepreneurial education look like in the future?

(Personal: Can I see myself in this world? If so, where?)

Shadow and Learn from: Friend entrepreneurs at MPowered, CFE, TechArb, RPM.

***

March: Wisdom (Love + Friendship)

Questions: What is “Great Love”? What’s it take to be a great friend? How do different people and institutions view the nebulous concept, “wisdom”? (How) Can people “learn” to be wise?

I will shadow and profile friends and people I believe to be wise.

Additionally, I am looking for a professors/students//collaborators to converse with and think about what intellectual, experiential, and practical things I can do to study wisdom.

Trips: Plan a retreat with friends. A Yule Ball. Potlucks. Societies. Chicago graduate school of Wisdom? London School of Life? (Perhaps play a mentorship role myself?)

April: A Review

Writing projects:

Write a book those personalizing their University (either a guidebook or a story-form).
Write reflections on TruApp/MPowered
Write reflections on My College Experience

***

Notes and Principles

Books: I’m focusing on reading the Great Books that I will not likely make time to read after the University. I can always read The End of Education, Good to Great, and the latest books after I graduate, but for now, I’d rather read Plato, Marx, and Emerson. For now, I’ll read the timeless over the timely (at least as far as books is concerned; I’ll also read articles and magazines).

Authors I'll be reading:

Plutarch Lives
Gibbons Rise and Fall of Roman Empire
Herodotus
Plato
Primo Levi
Hume
Marx
Nietzche
Descartes
Emerson
Melville
Montaigne
Proust
Joyce
Borges
Michael Lewis

TruApp: I’ll be working at a Start Up this semester aiming to revolutionize how we apply for jobs and grad schools.

Accountability: I will blog about the things I’m working on. I’ll send a weekly reflections to an Accountabillibuddy // board of advisors.

Deliverables: Having these will keep me focused and ensure that I am completing a satisfactory minimum:

Weekly:

Two columns a week

Follow someone for a day once a week (16 people total)

Read the books on the Syllabus

Long Term:

Write a guidebook for personalizing your education.

Solidify my plans for next year

Feedback is one of the most important things of self-education. I will aim to create a virtual learning community through my blog as well as a physical learning community with my friends and collaborators.

Community: Whether it’s reading, discussing, playing, working, or taking a trip with others, I enjoy and learn best when connecting with people. My communities: Friends. Chaser (My Band) TruApp. IM Basketball. “The Society”. Intellectual Lunches. Hillel. Shadowing People. Interviews with Professors. People to read Books with. Blog Collaborators.

More Explanations on Themes

Education – I’m passionate about personal development. The fact that we’ve made such advances in social sciences, yet have stagnated in education, baffles me. I would like to influence education in the future, whether as an entrepreneur, investor, writer, academic, educator, or perhaps a combination of the above. For my Education Theme, I’d like to read the seminal thinkers, learn from people who are well versed in the field, and learn the opinions of and what the everyday is like for the educators in the trenches.

Entrepreneurship – Entrepreneurship is, for me, an extension of my interest in education. With the intent to explore the community and soak up learnings, I’d like to study entrepreneurship as if I was pursuing an MBA in it in just four months.

Wisdom – As I’m still solidifying what I believe in and how I want to live my life, which is, I would say, a dynamic and constantly changing process, wisdom is essentially the theme of my semester. Wisdom (for me) ultimately boils down to developing positive and mutually beneficial relationships. (Subsets of wisdom, like having integrity and making smart decisions, are very important as well, and I include them as practices of having positive relationships.)

Importance of Place – Steven Johnson wrote that he moved because it slows down time. I believe I get complacent if in the same place for too long. In addition, moving places with people tends to make me feel like I know them better. Hence, although the practice of shadowing people will mix things up enough, I’ll add another element: Each Saturday night, I will sleep at a different friend’s house. (Hey friends – hope you have a couch ready for me!)

How you can get on board:

Education is a social activity. If you’re a friend, mentor, or are even merely share an interest, I encourage you to reach out. Here are some easy ways to get on board:

1) Read the blog + participate through comments (Become a Blog Collaborator)

2) Join me in reading these books or recommend some others, or join in on activities/communities

3) Provide feedback + recommendations with regards to the syllabi (do you know people who I should meet, interview or shadow? Want to be an accountabillibuddy?

4) Your thoughts in general are incredibly appreciated. Seeing as I am expert in education, entrepreneurship, philosophy, if you have ideas for better books to read, people/organizations to speak with, or other things I should think about, I encourage you to e-mail me at erik.torenberg@gmail.com

This is a flexible syllabus. It can change with incoming opportunities and people who want to get board.

An ideal learning environment & plan consists of the following:

Community//structure
Personal Goals//Skills want to improve
Structured & shared experiences followed by personal reflections
Mentors//Board of Advisors

Starting point for thinking about personalizing your education:

à What skills do you want to gain?

à How do you learn best (Solo//in a lecture hall//in small groups//informally?)

à Who do you want in your network//group of collaborators? à How can you add value to those who do so?

Apr

The Hidden Curriculum

2012-01-05T09:34:00.000-08:00

The Hidden Curriculum theory states that a large part of a student's education is learned inadvertently, that students, unconsciously and unwittingly, acquire many habits, practices, and dispositions in ways that had little to do with the curriculum design.

It's important to evaluate one's education, then, by looking at much more than what's on the curriculum. An education is also defined by the effects the learning environment has on one's work ethic, vision of success, feelings of self-worth, and day-to-day habits. That's institutional design, incetive structures, and the cultural traditions we preserve and expand upon are so important.

KIPP schools, as Brooks notes in this column, have codified skills and habits that are typically developed involuntarily, those typically part of a hidden curriculum:

"In short, KIPP is taking skills that middle-class kids pick up unconsciously and it is rigorously drilling them into students from less fortunate backgrounds. KIPP Academies, like many of the best schools these days, don’t just cram information into brains. They educate the elephant. They surround students with a total environment, a holistic set of habits and messages, and they dominate students’ lives for many hours a day."

We used to think that the best way to foster hard-working, confident, and judicious students was to leave them be -- to let them grow "naturally". We, Brooks argues, were severely mistaken.

"A generation ago, the gods of education fashion ordained that children should be liberated from desks-in-a-row pedagogy to follow their “natural” inclinations. In those days, human beings were commonly divided between their natural selves, assumed to be free and wonderful, and their socially constructed selves, assumed to be inhibited and repressed.

"But now, thanks to bitter experience and scientific research, we know that the best environments don’t liberate students. We know, or have rediscovered, that the most nurturing environments are highly structured. Children flourish in homes that are organized, in families where attachments are stable, among people who plan for the future and within cultures that celebrate work."