Trust What You Already Know

I’m taking a Spanish class right now. I’ve been meaning to do so for ages. I studied Spanish for five years in junior high and high school but—like most people who only studied in school—I never did get fluent in the language or comfortable with my skills. Our teacher has been encouraging us to turn...

Magic in the Mess

Back-to-school ads brought a childhood memory to mind. In eighth grade, I was disappointed to get a certain English teacher. He had a reputation for being boring and dismissive and not too bright (although I’m sure 8th graders had harsher terms for him). And he proved to be all of those things. But halfway through...

The Folly of Failure

What if failure didn’t exist? No, I’m serious. What if it’s just a word someone invented because he was feeling down about his work and the word stuck. It’s not hard to imagine a time when this word didn’t exist. There was a time when none of the words we use today existed. But at...