I am a proud member of the Exeter alumni community -- see also: What it's Like to Go to Phillips Exeter Academy, the "Best High School in the Country". Exeter made me a thinker. It made me a listener. It made me unafraid to share my opinions. The Harkness Method of teaching, in which every class is a debate, a dialectic, or a discussion, was a foundational part of who I am now. 

And now, due to an ill-informed Change.org petition, the future of that is at risk.

#WorkFromHomeDay!!!

Privilege is real. When I first graduated from college, I was definitely not in a position to "start my own thing." I had few savings, I lived in an expensive area, and I needed a job that would pay me now. I couldn't afford to "start something" that would probably fail, and definitely not be profitable for at least few months.

So I took a job at a startup. It was a daily deal site, like Groupon. And, like Groupon, it spent a lot on advertising. My daily ad spend was $13,000 -- and I didn't even know enough to know that was absurd. 

By the time that company ran out of runway, I had enough savings that I finally was in a position to "start my own thing" -- and it's been awesome!

In the last week, I've heard three different people claim that comparing yourself to others is somehow bad -- one even did it in a comment on my recent post, 3 Scientifically Proven Ways to STOP Caring What Others Think About You and Live a Happier Life.

But here's the thing. Comparing yourself to others, done correctly, is probably the best way to learn, improve, and build up your own confidence. Here's why:

One common misconception about feminism is that it's not about "equality," it's about giving women more rights than men. Guys (which I obviously mean in a totally gender-inclusive way). This couldn't be further from the truth.

Real feminism seeks both to eliminate inequality and to empower women to live their lives the way they want to. Meaning that some change has to come from men. But some change has to come from women.

I mean, we're equal, right? That means that men and women need to improve. 

And one of the ways in which women need to improve is in their use of hedging language.

In a high school English class, once, my teacher told me, "Make the unfamiliar familiar; make the familiar unfamiliar."

It's good advice -- and it helps explain the existence of movie tropes. (That, and the fact that, if you want to write a Hollywood blockbuster, you have to follow a pretty simple and predictable format -- see also Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need, by Blake Snyder. You'll love it, even if you have no intention of ever writing a movie.)

In many ways, Palo Alto, CA, is a paradise. This wealthy Silicon Valley town is built on the backs of tech companies like Google, Facebook, Palantir, and countless others. But with the explosive growth of these companies have come some serious problems.

Housing is unaffordable to all but a few. Traffic is horrific. And many people get terrible cell coverage, because Palo Alto lacks the infrastructure to sustain its population. 

Novels are great! They stir the soul. They share emotional journeys we can all relate to. It's great to read novels – which is probably why Stanford provides a list of three books -- usually novels -- for its incoming freshmen to read each summer.

My freshman year, the Three Books were M Butterfly, Annie John, and Old School, which was actually pretty spectacular -- especially since I'd just graduated from a New England boarding school.

But let's be honest. Did any of these books change my life? Prepare me for college? Change the way I think? Improve my cognitive skills?

No. But this one will:

Bloggers, life coaches and motivational speakers love telling people to stop caring what others think. And, to some degree, they're right. People don't watch, think or talk about you nearly as much as you think they do.

But. 

The idea that you can simply "quit caring" what others think goes against our very biology, and everything we were designed to do.

By now, I'm sure we've all heard of gamification -- a strategy that employs game-like elements in non-game contexts to improve employee, student or even just life engagement.

As someone who has studied and blogged about playfulness for years, I want to be on-board with the gamification movement. The problem is... a lot of managers are doing it totally wrong. 

So I heard a super interesting story about one of my favorite feminist scholars today.