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What Ideas Do You Have to Improve Your Favorite Sport?

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What Ideas Do You Have to Improve Your Favorite Sport?

What’s your favorite sport — to play or watch? What about the game do you find most compelling? The strategy? The uniforms? The history?

Despite your love, are there any things that irritate you about the game as it is presently played? Are games too long? Rules too confusing? Is there too much or too little scoring? Is the game not adapting to these modern times and a new generation of fans?

What ideas do you have to make your favorite sport even more fun, exciting or successful?

In “Sports Have Been on Pause. It’s Time for a Reboot.” the Times Sports desk reconsiders the health of professional sports and offers a plethora of ideas to improve them. Here are excerpts from their recommendations for baseball, football, basketball and soccer:

In M.L.B.

Speed up the game, but for real.

Eliminate mound visits. Reduce warm-up pitches. Stick to two-minute gaps between innings. Keep batters in the box and pitchers on the mound.

If you own a team that finishes last in the division three years in a row, you and your family must divest entirely.

But the team stays put.

Encourage bat flips.

There is nothing in the rulebook prohibiting bat flips and fist pumps — just your grandfather’s old-fashioned sense of decorum.

In Pro Basketball

You wouldn’t cut away from the climax of a movie, so why keep doing it during a big game?

More than other major sports, the N.B.A.’s drama is mostly found in the final two minutes — a span that can take 20 minutes in real time. The N.B.A. is addressing this, slowly, by limiting late timeouts. But keep the cameras rolling, and the audience in the arena, with no commercials.

What’s more thrilling than a 3-pointer? How about a 4-pointer?

Players like Damian Lillard and Stephen Curry have stretched the floor and the imagination by being efficient scorers from beyond 30 feet. Reward them.

Make “posterize” more than a metaphor.

Players dunked on memorably must be made into actual posters, to be handed out to children at the next game.

In the N.F.L.

Get serious about helmet technology and brain injuries.

Every shot to (and from) the head must be penalized — even “accidental” ones — until they’re rare. And it’s long past time that the N.F.L., which admits to the game’s damaging effects on brains, invests fully in a moonshot-type reimagining of the helmet. The hard shell was designed decades ago to prevent skull fractures, not concussions. Go full marshmallow?

In Soccer

Stop letting men’s soccer run women’s soccer.

There is no reason for women’s soccer, a sport experiencing its boom in the 21st century, to adopt structures and rules created by men in the Victorian era. Want to tweak some rules? Go for it. Want to have continental superleagues, as they do in European basketball and the N.B.A.? Go for that, too. Then create a global club championship for the top teams in each league.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

  • What’s your reaction to the article and its many recommendations — ranging from the creative and daring to the practical and the silly? Which improvement offered by Times writers would you most like to see come to true? Which of the proposed changes do you disagree with and think might hurt the game? Explain why.

  • Before making your own bold proposals, first tell us your favorite sport to play or watch. What draws you to the game? Which aspects do you find most compelling?

  • Next, diagnose your most beloved sport: What, if any, are the weaknesses of the game in its current form? Do you see any obstacles to its long-term success and health? For example, is it too long? Too slow? Not enough scoring? Too much scoring? Does it require too many people or too much equipment to play? Is it too dangerous or too expensive? Is it turning off younger fans?

  • Now, tell us how you would fix your favorite sport: What bold, wild or even fanciful changes would you propose? Share at least two ideas and explain why you think they will improve the sport.

  • Finally, how hard would it be to put your changes in place? What might be the drawbacks or unintended consequences of your game changes? How might purists or other critics respond to your proposals? What would you say to persuade them to join your side?

Lesson of the Day: ‘Laughter May Be Effective Medicine for These Trying Times’

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Lesson of the Day: ‘Laughter May Be Effective Medicine for These Trying Times’

Option 1: Create a Laughter First-Aid Box.

In the article, Mary Laskin, a nurse case manager, said she recommended “laughter first-aid boxes” for her patients, where they can stash joke books, funny toys and other props for this purpose.

Assemble your own laughter first-aid box. It can be a physical kit like the one pictured above, or a collection of digital artifacts, such as funny video and movie recommendations, entertaining social media accounts to follow, a playlist of songs that make you chuckle, or anything else.

Make a list of all the things you would include in your box. Then, if you have time, put it together and send it to someone you care about or squirrel it away for yourself when you’re in need of cheering up.

Option 2: “Play” With Your Pain.

Try this exercise suggested in the article:

“Charlie Chaplin once said, ‘In order to truly laugh you need to be able to take your pain and play with it,’” said Paul Osincup, the president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. “Write down all of the most difficult and annoying things about quarantine,” Mr. Osincup recommends. “Play with those. See if you can find any humor in your situation.”

Once you’ve created your list, see if you can find something to laugh about in any of the things you wrote down. Then choose one of those experiences and make something funny from it. You might write a joke or a tweet, perform a comedy sketch or a stand-up bit, create a meme or a TikTok video. Whatever you make, share it with someone to make them laugh.

Then, reflect: What was it like to “take your pain and play with it”? What was the response when you shared your joke with others? How did that feel?

Option 3: Weigh In on Our Related Student Opinion Question.

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, we asked students, “Is It OK to Laugh During Dark Times?”

Many students said yes. Julia Grandpre from Sarasota, Fla., wrote:

It is very important that we continue to laugh during these times. As a person who tends to dwell in negative thoughts, I believe that laughter is the best medicine right now. To find the fun in this situation, is not to take away from its severity, it’s just a coping mechanism … As people we need a bright side to look for, and since we are quarantined, laughter and the sharing of creativity is the best way to bring us together.

But a few, like Lauren Ackermann from Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn, Ill., warned:

Honestly, I see our generation as one where it has become easier than ever to make what some would call insensitive jokes about pretty much anything because it’s easier to laugh at a dark joke on a screen just like it’s easier to cyber bully someone through a screen. In both cases, you don’t directly see who you would impact by making a comment so you become disconnected from possible consequences. It might make you feel better to post that witty comment about people dying from coronavirus, but we all need to be mindful about how that comment would be perceived by people whose lives have been torn apart by the event you just laughed at.

What do you think? Read what else teenagers had to say, then add your voice to the conversation.

About Lesson of the Day

• Find all our Lessons of the Day in this column.
• Teachers, watch our on-demand webinar to learn how to use this feature in your classroom.

Burly Bears

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Burly Bears

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 2021.

Each year, people vote for the heftiest brown bear at the Katmai National Park and Preserve in southern Alaska. The Fat Bear Week contest, which highlights the animals’ dramatic weight gain in advance of winter hibernation, runs through Oct. 6. and is a way to raise awareness about the wildlife in the park and preserve.

Have you heard of this unusual and lighthearted “contest?” What do you think of Katmai’s novel way to market its park? If you were on the committee to promote a local park or other public institution near you, how might you borrow this idea and tweak it for your area? What could you ask the public to vote on that would raise interest?

Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more about this amusing competition.

About Picture Prompts

• Find all our Picture Prompts in this column.
• Have an idea for a Picture Prompt? Tell us about it.
• Teachers, discover more ways to teach with our Picture Prompts and learn how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning.

Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Word + Quiz: vapid

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Word + Quiz: vapid

1. lacking significance or liveliness or spirit or zest

2. lacking taste or flavor or tang

_________

The word vapid has appeared in 22 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on June 18 in “Padma Lakshmi Finds a New Voice, Amplifying the Voices of Others” by Tejal Rao:

“The whole point was to give the microphone to the people responsible for the most exciting food in the country,” Ms. Lakshmi said. This includes the historian and author Michael W. Twitty, the Charleston, S.C., chef B.J. Dennis, and the Apache leader Twila Cassadore, among so many others.

Though the format has its limits, each episode contains a full and often unexpected arc, with its own set of complications and contradictions. In the end, Ms. Lakshmi isn’t just the star of her own show. She’s chosen a far more powerful role: introducing her vast audience to a diverse constellation of voices.

The result is delicious, and makes for genuinely good television — producers greenlighting vapid, celebrity-filled food shows should take note.

_________

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Specializtion from DeepLearning.AI: Q&A with Sharon Zhou

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Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Specializtion from DeepLearning.AI: Q&A with Sharon Zhou

Sharon Zhou is the instructor for the new Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Specialization by DeepLearning.AI. This intermediate-level, three-course Specialization helps learners develop deep learning techniques to build powerful GANs models. Sharon is a CS PhD candidate at Stanford University, advised by Andrew Ng. Sharon’s work in AI spans from the theoretical to the applied — in medicine, climate, and more broadly, social good. 

How did you become interested in AI, namely GANs, and teaching others about it?

I enjoy optimizing for efficiency, but also powering through menial tasks, so AI and I seemed to have that in common. As I scanned through arXiv papers, I was mesmerized when I saw the outputs generated by GANs. My first project was with my friend and mentor, Kamyar Azizzadenesheli, who was advised by Anima Anandkumar. I still like humans more than AI, but GANs hold a special place in my heart!

How would you define Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)? 

Generative: You might have come across discriminative models like classifiers that try to differentiate between, say, types of pizza. Generative models, on the other hand, would characterize existentially what is a pizza, really? That is, how often pepperonis occur on a pizza, how often pizzas are calzones (never!). Generative models thus have a harder task than discriminative models, which is why you should be nice to your GAN and feed it better GPUs!

Adversarial: Two models, called the generator and the discriminator, optimize for opposite goals in a GAN: the generator tries to generate realistic objects to fool the discriminator, and the discriminator tries to determine whether the outputs are real enough. This battle continues until the generator can produce realistic outputs that you and I admire.

Network: GANs are neural networks.

How do you foresee the GANs landscape evolving over the next few years? Which industries are likely to be impacted? 

With GANs, realistic generation can drastically reduce the gap between simulation and reality, which would improve generalization a thousand fold across models in all machine learning paradigms. I’m also excited to see the emergence of hybrid models, because different types of models have different strengths. Multimodality is exciting too, because the world isn’t just images, just text, or just audio – in fact, with various sensors, we can have greater sensory depth than what we as humans naturally see, hear, feel, smell, or touch. 

The most obvious industries to utilize GANs would be image editing – Photoshop 2.0 and Snapchat filters will continue to improve – as will retail where we have visual choices (like trying on clothes, makeup, or the placement of furniture). Architects might use a GAN to show officials how their city will look with a new bridge or park.

What GANs applications most excite you? 

I’m excited about areas where GANs can be used for good:

Climate change: I recently worked with Turing Laureate Yoshua Bengio and his team on a project, where we used a GAN to generate different flood scenarios from street view images. What would your neighborhood look like under projected sea-level rise in five years? We called these visceralizations since they were both visual and prompted a visceral reaction.

Medicine: Medical data in particular can be difficult to acquire and sensitive to release, so GANs can help augment rare classes (like cancer). I also foresee GANs enabling accurate previews of expensive, time-consuming, or radiation-inducing medical examinations, leading to better patient care and management in healthcare systems worldwide.

Story-telling: Stories are a powerful medium for conveying information and influencing perspectives. I’m excited to see how GANs can generate Hollywood movies from a screenplay, or illustrations from a child telling her own bedtime story.

Who in AI inspires you? What are the most important conversations happening in ethical AI?

I’m inspired by the courage and intelligence of Adji Dieng, a pioneer in so many ways for women and people of color as the first black female professor of computer science in the Ivy League. Timnit Gebru’s work is foundational to understanding why we should interleave ethics with building AI. Anima Anandkumar, who joined us for the launch of this Specialization, is also an inspiration to me, as she exposes gender bias where it remains otherwise unchallenged. Finally, I co-host a podcast in the Stanford AI Lab with my friend Andrey Kurenkov, who inspires me everyday, as we demystify new AI work and provide ethical commentary on new AI products.

Without ethics in AI, certain people might not consider entering the field and others might be pushed out of it. Our Specialization covers bias in both ML at large and in GANs specifically. I very intentionally want this discussion to be interlaced with technical components. Evaluation is not just about how good your model is, it’s also about how you define “good.” 

Why was this Specialization created and what was your role in creating it? 

GANs and their amazing applications are growing by the day and yet, resources for learning about them are siloed. I had built my own knowledge by putting discrete concepts together and reading dense papers. This Specialization, thus, provides comprehensive educational materials to equip you with the tools to build your own GANs and dive deeper into advanced research. I’ve endeavored to create a cohesive, accessible, and engaging learning environment – what I would’ve wanted for myself when I was breaking into this space. 

Who is the ideal learner for the Specialization? What should learners know prior to taking it?  

There are three main target learner groups in the GANs Specialization:

  1. Technical: software engineers, data scientists, AI students, ML practitioners
  2. Business: entrepreneurs, product managers, venture capitalists, analysts
  3. Artistic: artists, content creators, marketers

I also hope to see students from fields such as medicine, physics, history, biology, film, etc. take this technology and run with their creativity and understanding of issues in their fields. In addition to CS, I was a Classics major at Harvard and was happy to recently see a cool GAN that brought Roman emperors to life. So get curious and keep exploring. You’ll eventually find the cup of tea that you’ll want to continue brewing!

Learners should have some experience with basic deep learning concepts and Python programming. This is covered in the Deep Learning Specialization.

Get started by enrolling in the Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Specialization today.

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Information Security – A Priority for Every Business

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Information Security – A Priority for Every Business

With so much business carried out online these days, businesses are finding themselves in possession of huge amounts of information and data. The management and protection of this information is critically important for businesses. Information security is not merely a concern for sectors such as banking or healthcare, it’s vitally important in every industry. 

Information security management means making sure that information is correct, easily and readily accessible and confidentially stored. An Information Security Management System (ISMS) is a management system which works on the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle of a Quality Management System. An ISMS includes operation controls, planning and risk assessment.

 

In October 2019, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) issued its latest Information Security Management System Standard – ISO 27001:2013. This standard outlines how to implement a robust Information Security Management System as well as how to continually improve management.

Now, thanks to Alison and Exoexcellence Consultants, you can study ISO 27001:2013 online for free and at your own convenience.

By Alison Publisher S. M. Waqas Imam

Remove & add a sidebar with Genesis layout options

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Remove & add a sidebar with Genesis layout options

Using Genesis Layout Options for removing and adding a sidebar

Did you know that most of Genesis Themes come with additional built-in Genesis layout options? They allow you to modify your design without touching its code. This tutorial will show you how to access the Genesis layout options and remove or add a sidebar to your post and pages.

Genesis Layout Options

There are two ways of disabling (or turning on) sidebar on your site. You can set it up for all posts and pages on your site at once or you can remove/add a sidebar just for one specific post or page. No matter which option you choose, you can always return to those settings later and revert them. Because of that, you do not need to worry about messing something up.

Sidebar settings for all posts and pages

Firstly, to change the sidebar settings across your entire site, go to your WordPress Dashboard. From there, navigate to the left tabs, pick Genesis, and the Theme Options.

Genesis Theme Settings

You should now see the WordPress Customization section in the new window. With a preview of your theme on the right and Genesis Layout Options on the left.

For the sidebar settings, go to the Site Layout tab.

Site Layout option in Genesis theme settings

Once clicked, it will give you access to a drop-down menu with all the layout options your theme has. Our WordPress premade themes come with a full-width layout and the one with the right sidebar. You can see it on the screens from Clara theme in this post.

Genesis Layout Options

Pick the layout you like and hit the Publish button at the top. Now all the posts and pages will be using the format of your choice.

Sidebar setting for one post or page

Sometimes, you need to turn off the sidebar for just one of your posts or pages. It is relatively easy to do with Genesis. With the new Gutenberg post and page editor, Genesis options can be found in the top right corner of your post or page edition screen.

Accessing genesis layout options from the post edition screen.

After clicking, it will change the right panel to Genesis layout options. To switch it back to the Document or Block view, you will need to click the cogwheel next to the Genesis icon.

Genesis Layout Options

Genesis panel on your post or page edition screen will have the same drop-down menu with the layout settings. The layout you will choose here will work only for this specific post or page so you can use it whenever you need a different view for your content.

I hope this tutorial was helpful! If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

How Much Do You Know About Sweden?

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How Much Do You Know About Sweden?

Can you find Sweden on a map? What else do you know about this European nation with about 10 million people?

A Portrait of a Market in India Run Solely by Women

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A Portrait of a Market in India Run Solely by Women

At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with travel restrictions in place worldwide, we launched a new series — The World Through a Lens — in which photojournalists help transport you, virtually, to some of our planet’s most beautiful and intriguing places. This week, Trishna Mohanty shares a collection of images from Imphal, the capital city of Manipur.

Barely five feet tall and hunched over, Anjana Devi, who is in her 80s, bellows instructions at two men as they unload crates of fruits from a mini truck. All around her, hundreds of women — most of whom are over 60 — mirror her actions. Farm-fresh produce surrounds them. The air is full of heady aromas: incense and fermented fish, jasmine buds and pungent spices.

Every shopkeeper in sight is a woman. Collectively, around 5,000 of them here in the Indian state of Manipur constitute one of the largest markets run solely by women in all of Asia.

Tucked away in a corner of northeast India, Manipur was once a sovereign state called the Kangleipak Kingdom. The valley was inhabited by various ethnic groups, and while patriarchy underlined their traditional norms and social structures, women were not confined to traditional roles.

The kingdom was often at war with its hostile neighbors, and, to keep them at bay, able-bodied men served the monarchy. In their absence, women took care of both households and trade. Around 1580, the monarch established an exclusive trading center for women called Nupi Keithel, or Women’s Market, in Imphal, what is now the capital of Manipur.

Under royal patronage, the traders grew in numbers and the market flourished. It became a conduit for social and political discourse, and women, emboldened by their new roles as drivers of the economy, began asserting themselves in new ways.

One such instance occurred in 1904, when traders from Nupi Keithel protested the colonial administration’s use of forced labor. Other Manipuri women joined the movement and stirred public outrage with several demonstrations. Eventually, the forced-labor policies were revoked.

This was the first Nupi Lan, or women’s war, a crucial milestone marking the political awakening of the people of Manipur led by women traders of Nupi Keithel. In 1939, the market spearheaded a second Nupi Lan against the King of Manipur. In the wake of both movements, the market emerged as the dominant voice of resistance against oppression and injustice — and the women emerged as the sentinels of a more equitable Manipuri society.

Born and raised in India, I learned at an early age that deep-seated patriarchal and misogynistic values can work to silence women’s voices. The act of speaking up demanded courage, and I saw an extraordinary example of it firsthand in 2004, when a dozen middle-aged women staged a protest over the death of Thangjam Manorama, a young woman who was taken into custody by soldiers and later found murdered, her mutilated body showing signs of sexual assault and torture.

The Manipuri protesters stood naked, holding banners that said, “Indian Army Rape Us” and “Indian Army Take Our Flesh.” They took aim at the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which had granted extraordinary powers to the Indian Armed Forces to maintain law and order, and which had led to incidents of extrajudicial executions and brutality against women. While the women’s demand to repeal the act was denied, paramilitary forces vacated their headquarters at the Kangla Palace in Imphal, where the protest had taken place.

And so, at the age of 16, I found my heroes in a group of disenfranchised women using their voices and bodies as an instrument of change in a conservative society. Ever since, I have been trying to understand how women living in far-flung corners of this country, with little to no privilege, are asserting themselves in a culture that oppresses and subjugates them.

“Beti! Beti!”

Several women traders of Nupi Keithel are vying for my attention. On a hot summer afternoon in March, I am their only customer. They call me beti, or daughter.

The vendors here are spread across three buildings and a massive open market. The shops are separated from each other by various goods. There is only enough space to display a small fraction of wares; the rest are bundled away in trunks and bedsheets that flank each seller as she sits cross-legged in her shop. Among the towers of surplus goods, I spot perfectly camouflaged placards with slogans like “We won’t stay silent” and “We demand justice.”

“We don’t speak the language of silence here,” says Laishram Mema Devi, who has sold handmade jewelry at the market for more than three decades. “It doesn’t matter who we are up against; if what they are doing is not in Manipur’s best interest, they will hear from us.”

Ema Mema makes about 12,000 Indian rupees per month, or about $160. (“Ema,” or mother, is a term used by the people of Manipur to address elderly women; in fact, there are so many elderly women in the market that locals refer to it as Ema Keithel, or Mother’s Market.) “It may sound like a small amount,” she tells me, “but it helped me raise three daughters.”

Walking around Nupi Keithel, I meet H.I.V. patients and other social outcasts who have found refuge here in the market. With the support of the community, they have been able to start their own businesses.

Camaraderie and collective strength thrive in the winding lanes of Nupi Keithel. But the market’s legacy has long since extended beyond its threshold. Manipur’s past bears the distinct imprint of it, and so, too, will its future.

Trishna Mohanty is a writer and photographer based in Pune, Maharashtra. You can follow her work on Instagram and Twitter.

How Is Your Mental Health These Days?

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How Is Your Mental Health These Days?

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 2021.

How are you feeling? What are you doing to take care of your mental and emotional needs? Do you ever feel like you need more support than you have?

Several weeks ago, the psychologist Lisa Damour wrote a Well column about how adults could help teenagers attend to their emotional needs as school resumed for a school year that seemed likely to be a challenging one. Some teenagers who read the column responded by asking Ms. Damour to write another column, this time addressed to them rather than to their parents.

In “Dear Teenagers, Here’s How to Protect Your Emotional Well-Being,” Ms. Damour does just that — and offers these five suggestions for young people.

Make the Most of Your Emotional Superpowers

Teenagers experience feelings more intensely than adults do, both negative and positive ones. While this amplifies the psychological discomfort you’re certainly experiencing right now, it also means that you get more out of pleasures and delights. These days the only bright spots many of us are finding are small ones, and for a lot of adults, these don’t feel very satisfying. But for you, small comforts and joys are more comforting and joyful than they are for adults. So, when your mood needs a lift, make the most of this emotional superpower.

What makes this power work for you will be highly personal. You might enjoy video games, pumpkin spice treats, cuddling your pet, being in nature, listening to music, going for a run or doing something else altogether. The adults in your life might not quite grasp how happy it makes you to watch your favorite movie for the umpteenth time. That’s OK. Just know what gives you a boost right now and enjoy it fully.

Trust Your Feelings

When you are worried, sad, stressed, frustrated or anything else, trust that you are almost certainly having the “right” feeling. I say this because you have been raised in a culture that is unnecessarily fearful of unpleasant emotions and which may have given you the impression that emotional distress invariably signals fragile mental health. This is not true. In upsetting times, feeling upset proves, if anything, that your emotions are working exactly as they should. You are in touch with reality — a painful one though it is — and attuned to your circumstances.

When your mood is good, trust that too. With the world off its axis, you might wonder if it’s all right to let yourself feel at ease. It is. Should you notice that calm emotional waters follow stormy waves of distress, don’t assume that you have somehow lost touch. In all likelihood, you have processed and moved past a painful mood, largely by allowing yourself to have it.

Count on Your Psychological Circuit Breakers

Sometimes we helpfully make room for unpleasant feelings. Other times psychological defenses kick in on their own like circuit breakers to protect us from emotional overload. Though psychological defenses can be problematic, such as when people use denial to ignore a painful truth, they are often healthy and can help us regulate how much of an upsetting situation we take on all at once.

For instance, you might notice that the anger you feel about your disrupted school days gives way to an appreciation for your growing self-sufficiency. Shifting from exasperation to rationalization maintains your connection to what’s happening while reducing the emotional charge. Using humor — say, when you are inspired to find inventive ways to crack up your classmates to manage the sheer frustration of sitting through online classes — works the same way. Here’s the point: Your mind is built to help you through this hard time. Put stock in its ability to keep your emotional current at manageable levels.

Have a Basic Plan for Mental Health Maintenance

Plenty of sleep and physical activity will improve your mood, reduce your stress, and increase how much you like yourself and other people. Enjoy the company of people who soothe and energize you. Steer clear of those who leave you feeling stirred up or spent.

Distribute your mental energy with care. So much will go sideways this year, and you have every right to resent the challenges and frustrations of Covid-19. Allow yourself time to be upset. Then try to direct the bulk of your energy toward that which you can control. What kind of friend do you want to be this year? What do you want to learn and get better at? What can you do to support others? Focus on what remains within your power, because exercising that power will help you feel better.

Understand When to Worry

If distress is to be expected, when is it time to worry? A first reason would be if your unwanted emotions start to feel like bad roommates: constantly around and taking the fun out of everything. It’s one thing if sadness, anxiety, irritation, outrage or grief stop by for a visit. But it’s another if they move in or linger for more than a day or two.

A second reason for concern would be if you find yourself routinely using unhealthy strategies to numb or contain painful feelings. Avoiding everyone, being cranky all the time, misusing substances, or sacrificing sleep to binge on social media may bring relief in the short term but create bigger problems down the line.

Finally, you should be worried if you feel you might harm yourself or do not feel safe in some other way. Should you be concerned about your own well-being, or that of a friend, reach out to a trusted adult. Tell a parent, a counselor at your school, or any other grown-up you can count on to take the situation seriously and mobilize the proper supports.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

  • What advice in the column do you think is most helpful for teenagers? Why?

  • What are the small comforts and joys in your life? How have these helped you get through the challenges of this year?

  • Ms. Damour writes that “teenagers should not underestimate the value of their own special strengths.” What do you think are your special strengths? Give examples.

  • Who — or what — has helped you the most in taking care of your emotional well-being this year? In what ways?

  • Ms. Damour recommends that teenagers have a basic plan for mental health maintenance. To help teens come up with their plan, she asks these three questions: “What kind of friend do you want to be this year? What do you want to learn and get better at? What can you do to support others?” Choose one or more of these questions to answer.

  • The column offers five pieces of advice for teenagers. If you were to add one more piece of advice, based on your own experience and insights, what would it be? Why?

About Student Opinion

• Find all our Student Opinion questions in this column.
• Have an idea for a Student Opinion question? Tell us about it.
• Learn more about how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning.

Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

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