Growing up, we are constantly encouraged to expand our vocabulary. We look up words we don’t know and practice implementing them in our everyday jargon. For me, it’s fun. It feels exciting to have more “tools” to use when participating in conversation or debate with someone.

So, what do you do for fun? It's a question that tends to help us get to know someone far better than any "what do you do for living" or "what's your favorite television show" would. It's also a question I see people struggle to answer all the time.Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, helped...

Let’s try an exercise. I want you to think about writing a song. Any subject you like. Every instrument is available to you. Take as long as you need.

Depending on who you are, you might currently be paralyzed, with no idea where to begin. Now, what if I said that you had five minutes and a...

During the Holiday season, we tend to weigh back and forth on what type of gifts we want to give. Do we want to one-click purchase something off of Amazon’s “Recommended Gift” list, or buckle down to spend an evening working with a new material and creating something entirely from scratch? Well,...

We live in an era where students are consumed by checklists: taking the SATs, navigating GPAs, and designing a schedule to fit all of their extracurriculars in any given Wednesday. These checklists distract students from the essence of what applying to college is supposed to be — which, at its...

There’s a reason we all like to be right — and perhaps it’s more biological than you think. According to Judith Glasser from the Harvard Business Review, “in situations of high stress, fear or distrust,“ a neurotransmitter called “cortisol” floods the brain and, as a result, brain functions that...

More and more, we are beginning to see a rising number of adolescents who, in striving for excellence, have developed elevated levels of stress.