My grandmother frequently admonished me throughout my early years by saying, “Curiosity killed the cat.” This reprimand usually coincided with actual or contemplated mischief, so I heard it a lot from my grandmother’s lips. She used the quip to keep me in line. I notice people stating this idiom to their children, to other adults, […]
My psychology students, all 21 of them, bent over the slips of paper I handed out moments before. Most had quickly worked through the first challenge on the paper. As the minutes ticked, most accomplished solving the second problem on the sheet. Within about 10 minutes ¾ of the class put their pencils down and […]
The 9th-grade English teacher, after receiving the call over the intercom to come to the office, gave the class a writing assignment and excused himself from the classroom. He trusted his students to diligently pursue excellence in his absence. Silence encapsulated the room as students put pen to paper. Then the door clicked closed. Relief […]
A popular buzz phrase in the self-help sector is “set the intention.” The philosophy goes that before any activity, pursuit, or interpersonal engagement, we should take a moment to set our intention so that we might achieve our best results and our best selves. For example, a person might set the intention of maintaining eye […]
Remember the big, gooey, green monster from childhood that lived under your bed? Remember how you learned to leap from your light switch so it couldn’t grab you by the ankles, pull you under, and gobble you up? Remember how you hid under your covers while in your imagination that ugly green monster grew and […]
A summer week in Savannah with my grandparents came with the heady juxtaposition of townhouse living with a parking lot to play in against farm living and running fields in rural georgia. Staying with my grandparents also came with challenges. There was the series of clown portraits that lined the wall of the staircase leading […]