Annie's all, "Now get lost."

​Humans love chivalry -- just take a look at every movie ever made. Woman gets in trouble. Man saves woman. Or look at some of the most beloved photos from every wedding ever. Grandson dances with Grandma. Father walks bride down the aisle. 

After a year of demanding "trigger warnings" on lectures, videos and class materials, was it hypocritical to protest rape at graduation?

Brock Turner (above) was caught raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster at Stanford.

The conscience of everyone who has a moral compass was shocked this week when Brock Turner, who was caught in the act of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, received a lenient six-month sentence. After being convicted of three felonies, including assault with intent to rape.

This is not justice, and steps have already been taken to recall the judge responsible for the sentence, Aaron Persky.

​The victim, who has chosen to remain anonymous, released the letter that she read aloud to her attacker at the trial to Buzzfeed on June 3. By June 6, over 6.2 million people had read her 7,000+ word statement. (It's powerful. If you haven't, you should read it.)

"Remember that time I saw someone breaking into a car in front of your house?" I asked one of my best friends last week.

"No," he answered, alarmed. "When was that? Did you call the police?"

"Well... yes. Eventually," I told him.

"Eventually? Why didn't you call right away?!"

"Um, because..." I paused, knowing how stupid this would sound. "The guy was black?"

Stanford should give students an education - not a mental illness.

Author’s Bio: Ron Smith is a Critical Thinker. He holds a Ph.D. in physics and is a retired engineer, manager, and senior executive from the high-tech industry. He serves as a Trustee of Gettysburg College and is a philanthropist to multiple institutions of higher education, including within the University of California system.

A famous idiom dates back to the first Democracy in ancient Greece: “Actions speak louder than words”. For U.S. presidential candidates, this idiom applies when candidates’ past actions are vetted against their campaign promises and positions. But unlike the other candidates -- and despite a 44 year career in politics! -- Bernie Sanders has received very little vetting of his actions against his campaign promises.

I just finished a post on my Paved With Verbs blog that I felt was too important not to share. In Going to Stanford Doesn't Mean You'll Get a Stanford Education - And Going to a State School Doesn't Mean You Won't, I wrote:

As everyone who reads The Happy Talent (hopefully) knows, I do some really cool life coaching and college consulting work at my company, Paved With Verbs. Sometimes, when brainstorming ideas for college essays, a student will ask me, "What did you write about? How did you stand out when you applied to Stanford?"

The answer... is scuba diving. I've loved diving ever since I was old enough to pass as a 12-year-old (the minimum age to participate in Discover Diving programs). So maybe since I was nine? I got certified as soon as I was old enough for a PADI Junior Open Water Diver Certification, and began spending summers at ActionQuest, a summer camp in the British Virgin Islands, where I earned my Advanced Open Water Diver, Underwater Naturalist, Underwater Navigator, Search and Recovery and Rescue Diver specialties (in addition to Red Cross CPR for the Professional Rescuer, DAN Oxygen Administrator, and other first aid certs). 

Best. Summer camp. EVER.

My heart broke today when I learned about yet another teen suicide in Palo Alto. Looking through the comments on the article, as well as notes from recent community forums, it's clear that many parents and students in the PAUSD want to cap the number of APs a student can take -- or even eliminate APs altogether. 

I haven't decided if that's a good idea or not. But, through my experience working and studying with admissions officers at Stanford, as well as working as a college admissions counselor, I have decided one thing:

Last week, William Deresiewicz, author of  Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, published a controversial piece in The New Republic. Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League basically claims that kids who go to top schools get turned into zombies.

He's right, a little. There are definitely kids at top-tier schools who are intense, hard-working memorizers, but pretty poor problem solvers. The problem is, Deresiewicz taught at an Ivy for many years, so these are the exact sorts of kids he was likely to interact with most. You know -- the self-selecting group that only cares about getting the A. The ones who hound TA's about what questions will and won't be on the exam. Who are more focused on performance than learning.

The real inventors, innovators and creators at Ivy League schools are often too busy for office hours. They're too busy for the A. They're off exploring the world around them -- and identifying important energy, infrastructure and social problems along the way. They're turning the project they did for last semester's engineering class into a company. They're leading their volleyball or dance or debate or whatever-they're-passionate-about team to a national championship. Or playing in a rock show. Or taking advantage of one of the thousands of non-classroom opportunities available to them at a prestigious and well-endowed school.

Deresiewicz's strongest point is that fewer and fewer kids who make it to the Ivies think this way. But here's what he got wrong:

Good schools don't turn kids into zombies. Bad parents do.