Topic: Bullish Life

Bullish: Actually, We’re All Kind of the 1% (And How Not to be a Jerkface About It)

Bullish: Actually, Weâre All Kind of the 1% (And How Not to be a Jerkface About It)

I’ve been watching the Occupy Wall Street protests with much interest.

Who, exactly, are the 1%? Apparently, anyone who makes $350,000 a year, although there’s a pretty huge difference between your average anesthesiologist, who can certainly make that much, and someone who gets a several-million-dollar bonus made up entirely of taxpayers’ bailout money that’s been folded into origami swans by children in a Chinese factory. More »

Bullish Life: How To Remember Names (Without Stupid Mnemonic Devices)

Bullish Life: How To Remember Names (Without Stupid Mnemonic Devices)

I teach evening classes to adults, and I often have about 90 students at a time. I remember all their names (at least the names of the students who show up regularly).

My first year of teaching, I didn’t. I just gave up: there are 16 of them per class and only one of me, and also a lot of them are named “Iftikhar” and “Joo-Eun.”

Once, I forgot a student’s name, and he said, “It’s John. John. Like a toilet.” And that made me sad. And I did indeed think of a toilet every time I called on him. This is not how John or I want to live.

There are some very good ways to remember names. More »

Bullish Life: When “Achievements” Just Leave You Feeling Empty

Bullish Life: When "Achievements" Just Leave You Feeling Empty

When I was fifteen and possibly, in retrospect, a sort of adorable thing stomping around in ugly glasses and Payless heels and shouting about social contract theory, I won the state debate championship of Virginia.

It was a big deal at the time; the “nice” part of Virginia is up near DC, and some were quite offended that some girl from the hinterlands had upset the sociocultural order by taking home a trophy for excellent argumentation. More »

Bullish Life: How to Bitchslap Performance Anxiety

Bullish Life: How to Bitchslap Performance Anxiety

In the past decade, I have coached hundreds of people through standardized tests.

While a few genuinely have panic attacks and require the care of a mental health professional, most just suffer from the sort of fight-or-flight response that two million years of evolution have decided is an appropriate response to heights, snakes, and being asked questions regarding the rate at which a cylindrical tank will empty if it is simultaneously being filled and leaking and also the radius of the tank is the square root of a variable. More »

Bullish: Be Your Own Life Coach

Bullish: Be Your Own Life Coach

As much as I love alliteration, here are two words that really shouldn’t go together, at least in the same day: “breakup” and “biopsy.”

The last couple of weeks of my life have been difficult, but that turned into, I think, a helpful column last week: Bullish: Responding to Disappointment with Awesomeness (and also Bullish Life: Sometimes It’s Best Just to Not Think About It). And maybe it’ll turn into a helpful column today. More »

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