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Being Gen X is funny. There are so few of us.
I grew up on Baby Boomer culture—the music, the TV ads, the general worldview—and now find my life dominated by the culture of Millennials (no thanks, Mark Zuckerberg, for Facebook) and Gen Z. The rules are changing fast, and my generation is not the one that is changing them.
It’s fascinating to watch top athletes like Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles (both Gen Z) decide to do what they want instead of what’s expected of them.
Read MoreYou can tell the people who are really super into Instagram by how they display their story highlights on their profile.
Instead of little round thumbnails showing auto-generated images from the videos and photos they’ve shared in their stories, these folks feature brand collateral in the tiny circles: their signature colors and typefaces, custom illustrations, and so on. They’re sending a strong signal that they are devoted to the platform and to thorough branding.
Read MoreThanks to our free pro Zoom account (thanks, Eric Yuan!), we now have some new features to manage the video conferences we run for our middle schoolers. Disabling chat, for instance, is a must-have.
Another useful feature is the ability to mute the mics of all participants with one click. However, we don’t use that unless we have to. Until the meeting officially begins, we let the students socialize; when it’s time for us to start, we politely ask them to mute their own microphones. One by one, we see the “mute” icons appear.
Read MoreWhen I look back at my college career at the University of Maine, many of my fondest memories revolved around being a member of the University Singers under the direction of Dr. Dennis K. Cox.
I have learned many things from DC, including the beauty of choral literature and the magic that can be created by a joyful group of people unified in their sound and their intent. However, one lesson I’ve never forgotten was one applicable not to choir, but to life in general. He told us, “When faced with a decision, it doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as you commit to it one hundred percent.”
Read MoreWe’ve seen the moving TED talks where kids in Kenya or India talk about how desperate they are to have an education and how grateful they are to be able to go to school. But to kids who already have the amazing privileges of speaking English, living in the United States, Internet access, and literate parents, formal education doesn’t carry as dramatic a promise of advancement. It doesn’t feel like an incredible gift — it feels like a burden and a bother.
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