Ensure you’re up to date with the latest thinking on key issues in healthcare with these courses from top organisations.
Antibiotic Resistance
According to the WHO ‘without urgent action, we are heading for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill’. Take action by learning about the challenges and potential solutions to antibiotic resistance.
The number of people with obesity in the UK has more than trebled in the last 25 years (BBC), a worrying statistic when obesity brings with it increased risks of cancer, diabetes and heart disease. How can we get the world’s weight back to healthy levels? Maybe we start by educating children.
There has been plenty of excitement about the possibilities of genetic sequencing, but what are the facts? Could we truly be entering an era of personalised medicine? Find out with courses exploring the cutting edge, from NHS Health Education England and St George’s.
In this time of turbulent politics right across the globe the threat of inequality seems to be increasing. Now is the time to get practical advice and learn useful strategies for ensuring everyone has access to basic healthcare and human rights.
Although Zika is no longer making front pages, there is still much to learn about managing this fast-moving, devastating disease, including lessons that might prove invaluable if another epidemic breaks out.
According to Diabetes UK diabetes is the ‘fastest-growing health threat facing our nation’ with over 3 million people in the UK alone living with diabetes. This presents healthcare with plenty of challenges from managing insulin treatment, to preventative measures to helping diabetic people lead healthy lives.
As medicine has improved so have life expectancies – we have never lived longer. However this newfound longevity has brought with it a set of challenges, the biggest being managing a large ageing population. Ensuring quality of life for this growing group of people is a major concern.
Thankfully for the 1 in 4 adults (NHS) who will suffer a mental health issue during their lives, stigma around mental health problems is fading. However knowing how to diagnose and manage common mental health problems like depression and anxiety can still be a struggle for doctors and healthcare professionals. This popular course from the University of Reading is a good introduction to diagnosis and treatment.
In this post find some brand new courses, and a few old favourites, to help you develop a new passion, skill or hobby in May.
Write a screenplay
Unleash your inner Sorkin, Cody or Tarantino with this popular introductory course to screenwriting. Learn the basic concepts of scriptwriting and be confident in the language of screenwriting – don’t forget to thank us in your acceptance speeches.
If learning a language is on your to-do list then this brand new course is for you. Over 6 weeks it will introduce you to Korean language and culture and by the end you will be able to have a simple conversation in Korean.
Create beautiful rhythms and beats with just one instrument: your computer. This course from Goldsmiths will show you how to build drum machines and synthesizers that run in your web browser using Javascript.
Make May the month you destress by learning to be mindful. A firm favourite amongst learners this introductory mindfulness course will equip you with the tools to reduce your stress levels and improve your study and work performance.
Who says playing is just for children? Not the team from the University of Sheffield that’s for sure. Discover the history of play and learn how playing could enrich your daily life whatever age you are.
In the first part of a bumper two-part post, we look at some of the things that a great teacher does, and courses you can take to develop your teaching skills.
A great teacher…makes every subject interesting
Keeping students involved and excited in what they’re learning can be difficult if the subject is complex or takes a student out of their comfort zone. Great teachers can turn even the most tricky subjects into engaging lessons that keep students motivated.
The same old routines day in and day out can make school stale quickly. A great teacher can get creative with lessons to capture attention and help students rekindle their interest.
A great teacher…gives everyone the chance to learn
Ensuring all young people have the chance to get an education is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2017. A great teacher works to ensure every person in their class has the chance to learn and creates an inclusive environment so no one misses out.
One disruptive student can stop a whole class learning. Great teachers know how to effectively use discipline to keep the classroom under control while still giving students freedom to learn.
Keeping up your own learning whilst teaching is a challenge. That’s why FutureLearn courses are made up of bite-sized chunks of learning, so you can fit them around your timetable. Whether you want to develop a new skill or brush up on an old one, we might have something to help.
Codecademy’s very own Nick Duckwiler (left) and Ryan Tuck from Warby Parker (right) in our office. (📷: Mitch Boyer)
Last month, Codecademy and Warby Parker came together to work on a special Learn SQL from Scratch Capstone Project. It was during this time when I met Ryan Tuck, a Data Engineer at Warby, who played a major part in this partnership. So when he decided to drop by our office for the final QA round, I had to break out my notebook and ask some questions. Enjoy.
Hey Ryan, let’s start off with a question I’ve had for a while — what is a Data Engineer? (Is it similar to a Data Analyst or a Software Engineer?)
At Warby Parker, data engineers are responsible for creating and maintaining the plumbing required to support the data and reporting needs of the business. We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.
What languages/frameworks do you use at Warby?
On data engineering, we use Python as our general purpose programming language, as do most of the other teams in our Technology department. When it comes to databases, we use PostgreSQL for the majority of our SQL needs, and are beginning to use Amazon Athena and Google BigQuery for some of our larger datasets. We use Looker as our exclusive business intelligence entry point to all of this data.
What are some of the projects you worked on?
I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of of smart people in every department at our company to help them solve their varied data needs, from reconciling financial data with the Accounting team to automating and modeling standardized performance metrics for our team of over 200 customer experience advisors.
As part of a team of five supporting the data needs of a rapidly growing company, I’ve tried where possible to focus on helping our analysts solve their own problems. This includes helping people learn Python and commit to our codebase, guiding the creation of data models in SQL, and encouraging people to submit pull requests to add features in Looker, our BI tool.
Seeing dozens of otherwise “non-technical” colleagues opening up PRs on a daily basis, and consequently being part of the democratization of tech that we value at Warby Parker, is probably the most rewarding “project” I’ve been a part of.
One project finished recently during our first annual “Hackweek” is called Pipes, which allows anyone at the company to easily move large amounts of data from wherever to wherever (Looker, Google Sheets, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, etc) on a regular cadence, or manually through a simple one-line chatbot interface. The adoption has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re looking to grow this sort of tooling out even more.
“We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.”
What got you into the data field?
I’ve always been drawn to analytical fields like math, and became pretty proficient in Excel during some internships in college. Once I had learned to program and learned more about data science and its applications in artificial intelligence, I knew that anything I could do to immerse myself in the world of data would be a step in the right direction.
Three and a half years ago, I landed a job as a junior software engineer at Warby Parker not fully knowing what I was in for, but am so glad I got the opportunity to help build tools to support an interesting and ever-changing data-driven culture here.
Where did you learn SQL and Python?
I had a background in C++, and was exposed to Python through an Intro to Data Science course. When Warby Parker hired me onto the Data team in 2015, I had never written a SQL query in my life, but picked it up quickly and within a few months started up internal SQL training classes, which I still teach on a monthly basis.
What does your tattoo say?
The ultimate cheatsheet.
This is Bayes’ Theorem, which is an equation that describes how to update probabilities given new evidence. Two summers ago I worked on building a tool to help predict weekly fantasy football performance. Some colleagues suggested a Bayesian approach would be appropriate, since there aren’t really enough data points in an NFL season to be able to use statistical approaches that require larger datasets, and I’d want to regularly update my predictions after each player’s latest performance.
I did a deep dive into understanding the (simple) math underlying Bayes’ Theorem and came out of that experience with a whole new worldview, understanding my entire knowledge of the world as a big and intricate probabilistic model that I was continuously updating with every experience I ever have. It was pretty transformative, and I figured that was worth a tattoo.
What is a concept in SQL/Python that’s essential to your work?
Donald Knuth said, “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.” I’ve generally found this to be true, and try to live by it in my work. For example, I’ll generally prefer to keep a data model simple by rebuilding it for all time on a daily basis using a single SQL query instead of making a more complicated model that requires iteratively adding to a table, keeping track of state, updated timestamps, when something last ran, etc.
A wise man once said, “Duplicating data makes things go fast,” but databases are already impressively fast to begin with, without implementing anything to improve performance. Ultimately, I almost always approach a problem thinking about optimizing for my time over machine time, for readability over performance, and for introducing as little cognitive overhead as is required by the problem at hand. Only once performance issues or readability issues present themselves will some code be worth a rewrite.
Last question! Since you wrote Warby Parker’s internal SQL training courses, I know there gotta be some inner Curriculum Developer in you. Can you teach a SQL concept in 2 minutes?
Sure! Have you ever written a query that yields some result set and you think, “I’d love to query the stuff I just produced like it was a table?” Enter the WITH clause.
Suppose I have a mega query that gives the transaction summaries:
select
transactions.date as transaction_date,
sum(items.price) as total_cost,
count(*) as number_of_items
from
transactions
inner join
customers
on
customers.id = transactions.customer_id
inner join
transaction_items
on
transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
inner join
items
on
items.id = transaction_items.item_id
Using WITH, I can create a temporary table within my query that I can SELECT from and treat it just like a regular old table.
I will put everything from the previous query in a parentheses and use WITH to give it the name transaction_summaries.
Then I’ll apply the date and customer filtering down below for a more readable query, to separate out all the JOIN logic from the actual WHERE filters that I want to apply on that data.
with transaction_summaries as (
select
transactions.date as transaction_date,
sum(items.price) as total_cost,
count(*) as number_of_items
from
transactions
inner join
customers
on
customers.id = transactions.customer_id
inner join
transaction_items
on
transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
inner join
items
on
items.id = transaction_items.item_id
)
select
*
from
transaction_summaries
where
first_name = 'beyonce'
and
transaction_date > '2018–01–01'
order by
total_cost desc
limit
5
If you’re familiar with subqueries, this does a similar thing but makes the SQL far more readable, even if your query isn’t quite as performant as it would have been. This is essentially an implementation of the mantra “Don’t Repeat Yourself” that’s common in the world of programming.
Incredible. And love the SQL styling! 😍
Huge shout out to Ryan and the whole Warby Parker team for making this partnership happen. Special hat tips for behind-the-scenes support from:
A Day in the Life of a Software Engineer (via Life of Luba)
With Airbnb came a revolution of sorts in the world of vacation travel and culture. We sat down with Luba Yudasina, a YouTuber, an opera singer, and a Software Engineer on the Airbnb’s Homes Platform team, to discuss software engineering and her programming journey—from Codecademy to Airbnb!
Hey Luba, let’s start with the basics! What does a Software Engineer on the Platform team do at Airbnb?
Homes Platform’s mission is to create the building blocks to power all Homes categories. Any project undertaken by our team should be reusable and extensible in some way. This means that as a backend engineer, I have a lot of opportunities to work on impactful technical projects that create systems and services to support Homes, as well as collaborate across teams to come up with the best architectural decisions and designs.
Recently, our team wrote a blog post on classifying Room Types into categories using Machine Learning and computer vision. The room-type classification problem largely resembles the ImageNet classification problem, except our team’s model outcomes are customized room-types.
After a few experiments with various models, the team chose ResNet50 due to its good balance between model performance and computation time. To make it compatible with our use case, we added two extra fully connected layers and a Softmax activation in the end.
Let’s rewind a little bit. Coming from a chemical engineering background in college, how did you make the switch into programming?
I went to the University of Waterloo in Canada—a university with the biggest co-op program in the world. Co-op means that to obtain a bachelor’s degree you must complete a certain number of internships. If you are in Engineering at Waterloo, you must complete 5 internships to graduate.
In my first and second years, I interned at chemical engineering companies and afterwards I couldn’t see myself working in the field full-time. That’s why I’m particularly grateful that I studied at Waterloo: if not for co-op, I probably would not have realized I didn’t want to work in chemical engineering until getting a full-time job after graduation.
I happened to have a lot of friends in Computer Science and Software Engineering right when I realized Chem Eng wasn’t for me. They really encouraged me to try coding, and when I decided to follow their lead I never looked back! My first online programming course was Web Development on Codecademy 🙂
“It’s a really cool time to be a software engineer and even cooler to be a female software engineer, because this is the time when women start to embrace their own unique identities and be ok with not being ‘one of the dudes.'” -Luba Yudasina
When I decided I wanted to learn computer science on my own, my goal was to get an internship in the field because working as a software engineer at a tech company would be the best test to really know if it was for me.
I happened to be in Munich, Germany on academic exchange for a whole year when I was learning how to code, so I hustled as much as I could while being there to get experience to learn quicker and have something to put down on my tech resume.
Almost immediately after arriving in Germany, I got a part time job as a developer at a game publishing company. I had a good friend in Computer Science at my German university: her and I ended up working on an Android app as a side project, etc. When I was ready, I started preparing for technical interviews. I then leveraged my network to refer me to companies and do mock technical interviews with me.
Yelp was really random though—a Yelp recruiter looked at my LinkedIn profile and didn’t even message me, but I messaged them anyway asking about internship opportunities, and that’s how I got my interview there!
Airbnb HQ in San Franciso
What is an essential app/item in your day-to-day?
Code searching! A lot of software engineering is problem solving and a lot of it is understanding other people’s code and the reasoning behind writing it a certain way. Searching through the codebases is almost essential to my day to day. Whenever I build something new or build on top of already existing tech, I need to understand how it works and is written, and code search is vital to this.
At Airbnb we use Google’s Codesearch for these purposes, but developers (myself included) also frequently use their IDEs to search for relevant code. I mostly use RubyMine or IntelliJ (depending on the codebase I’m working with).
In your videos, you’ve mentioned the intersection of gender and technology. Can you speak a bit more about that?
It’s a really cool time to be a software engineer and even cooler to be a female software engineer, because this is the time when women start to embrace their own unique identities and be ok with not being “one of the dudes.”
I think it’s particularly important to redefine the stereotypes, and I hope that with my own example I can show young girls and women interested in the field that you don’t have to give up your feminine side to be a software engineer and still be into fashion, or makeup, or art (I personally sing opera) and have other interests outside of coding and be successful in the field.
Before we wrap up, do you have anything else you would like to say to our learners?
Don’t be discouraged, learn and absorb as much as you can! If you don’t understand a concept or can’t build a project right away, know that with practice, perseverance and concentration you will get there!
Take advantage of such amazing tools as Codecademy that are there for you to take and learn. Learning anything new can be frustrating, but knowing that you can do it, staying curious, asking questions and not losing your motivation is the key to success.
Huge shoutout to Luba for this insightful interview. It’s always incredibly moving to see a Codecademy learner go on to do bigger things. Go subscribe to her YouTube channel, Life of Luba.
And thank you to the whole Homes Platform/Engineering team at Airbnb for the support. Check out their wonderful open source projects on airbnb.io.
1. Why, according to the article, do the Grammys “still walk a tightrope?”
2. Who is Neil Portnow? What did he say a year ago about what he felt women in music needed to do? What did he say about the issue in an interview last week?
3. What changes were made to the Grammy Awards since last year? What are the reasons for the changes?
4. Who are the artists who were invited to perform at the ceremony and declined?
5. How many producers and engineers were credited on the eight songs that were nominated for record of the year? How many of them are female?
In the Grammy context, the music video category — No. 83 out of 84 on the official list — is generally an afterthought. It was instituted in 1984, the same year MTV inaugurated its Video Music Awards, just as the medium was becoming central to star-making. At this moment — when artists are as likely to develop their audiences on YouTube as on any audio-only platform, and in which expertise in self-presentation and self-promotion is mandatory — the category feels essential. The nominations recognize clips that shaped conversation as much as the songs they illustrate. Some of these videos are wholesale pieces of art in which the visuals and music are fundamentally inseparable; sometimes the importance of the video itself trumps that of the song.
…. Inventive videos have won in this category before: Janet and Michael Jackson’s “Scream” in 1996, Missy Elliott’s “Lose Control” in 2006, and “Formation.” But more frequently it has gone to the just-fine-enough (or just-expensive-enough) video for an otherwise very popular song, or to an artist so famous (say, the Beatles, in 1997) that Grammy voters tick their box reflexively.
But moving forward, this category should be seen as an opportunity to embrace a whole new breed of musician, one who reflects what has long been true but rarely acknowledged at the Grammys: that the job of a recording artist has changed, and that those now making the most vivid impact are as careful about how they look as how they sound.
Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” won best music video, along with song of the year, best rap/sung performance, and record of the year. Do you think his receiving these awards is a step in the direction Mr. Caramanica outlines? Why or why not?
Of what significance was this multiple award winner’s absence from the award ceremony? Explain.
And then a college friend, Barbara Zimmerman — married to Jason Epstein, a young publishing whiz at Doubleday — suggested to her husband that Ted would be the perfect person to create the jacket art for Anchor Books, the new line of quality paperbacks Jason was launching. Gorey dithered — “At first I said no, but then I thought, ‘I’m not really surviving very noticeably in Boston, so I’ll move to New York, much as I hate the place.’” And so at the start of 1953 he moved, “and embarked on what is laughingly called my career.”
Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the Munich Olympics in 1936, broke or equaled nine Olympic records, also set three world records and single-handedly shattered Adolf Hitler’s myth of Aryan superiority; yet his record mark of 10.3 seconds in the 100 meters would today be 21 feet behind Usain Bolt’s record of 9.58. Would it be more fair to incorporate broader cultural accomplishments? Or should the Greatest of All Time focus solely on the numbers?
Student Challenge: Make your case for the G.O.A.T.
First, ask your students to decide which aspect of the G.O.A.T. debate they would like to tackle: greatest play, season, game, coach, athlete, et cetera.
Next, they should define their criteria for greatness: Does greatest mean the player you want to be up at bat in the seventh game of the World Series, two outs in the bottom of the ninth? Is it instead the number of an athlete’s victories? His or her longevity? The relative strength of the competition? The athlete’s impact within, as well as beyond, the sport?
Advance Evidence-Based Arguments and Tackle Counterarguments
Use a model text or two to help students move from mere assertion or opinion to rigorous, evidence-based argument. Here are a few excerpts to highlight how authors both support claims with evidence and anticipate counterarguments:
Westbrook’s season, while awesome, is not the greatest in N.B.A. history. That belongs to none other than Wilt Chamberlain in 1961-62 with the Philadelphia Warriors. Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds that season and (this may be the greatest stat in all of sports) 48.5 minutes played per game. Regulation games last 48 minutes, but the Warriors played seven games that extended for at least one period of overtime. During that 80-game regular season, Chamberlain played 3,882 of Philadelphia’s possible 3,890 minutes.
On March 2, 1962, Chamberlain famously scored 100 points against the Knicks, but that was only the culmination of a four-game stretch in which he scored 67, 65 and 61 points in the three previous games, according to basketball-reference.com. All told, he scored at least 60 points 15 times that season, including a stunning performance on Dec. 8, 1961, against the Lakers, in which Chamberlain delivered 78 points and 43 rebounds.
In light of that and Williams’s enduring excellence, there is momentum building behind the concept of deeming her the greatest player ever. It is a subjective process, one in which it is always tempting to give too much weight to the great champion in front of you, the one whose victory under pressure is freshest in your mind.
What is beyond dispute is that Williams has not been nearly as consistent in regular tour events during her career as players like Navratilova, Chris Evert and Graf.
Navratilova won 167 singles titles as well as 177 doubles titles in an era when doubles was much more prestigious than now. Evert won 154 singles titles. Graf, who did not play as long as Williams has played, won 107. Williams, for the moment, has 67, which puts her in a tie for sixth on the career list with Billie Jean King. …
But if “greatest” means the player who would have beaten all the rest at their peaks, it is hard not to feel a strong pull in Williams’s direction. Her power serving and her serving under pressure are weapons that no other great player has possessed to the same degree. Modern equipment is certainly a factor, but she is also complete off the ground and, guided by her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, improving her volleys, overheads and tactical variations.
Together, the class might analyze how these authors develop their case for G.O.A.T., for example, by defining their terms for greatness, providing evidence to support claims and anticipating and then considering potential counterclaims.
Here are additional resources, from The Times, and elsewhere, that can provide alternative mentor texts:
Ultimately, there is no right answer to the G.O.A.T. question. To some, Jesse Owens will always be the G.O.A.T. for his cultural impact; for others, Bill Russell’s 11 N.B.A. championships will trump all other measures. But that is the beauty of the debate. And in the end, it’s about the power of the argument to persuade others — at least for that day — who is the Greatest of All Time.
Welcome to the first 2019 edition of Teenagers in The Times. This roundup of the news and feature stories about young people that have recently appeared across sections of NYTimes.com appears on the first Thursday of each month during the school year.
For ideas about how to use Teenagers in The Times with your students, please see our lesson plan and special activity sheet, both of which can be used with this or any other edition.
This Opinion essay states, “If they’re not held accountable at school, what’s to stop them from becoming the villain of another woman’s #MeToo story once they enter the work force?”
Income Sharing Agreements are gaining the attention of higher education and Wall Street. One early success story is getting a boost from venture capital.
Financial and enrollment woes at schools like the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point have led to a scramble for fixes, such as dropping longstanding liberal arts degrees.
The federal government is closing a controversial tent city for migrant children in Texas. But officials are now moving to nearly double the capacity of a similar facility in Florida.
Federal officials face a balancing act as they investigate alleged wrongdoing at Southwest Key, the largest provider in an overburdened shelter system.
The 13-year-old, whose parents were killed when she was abducted, will receive the money from the food company where her parents worked for nearly three decades.
Jake T. Patterson, 21, was held pending murder and kidnapping charges, the authorities said. Jayme, 13, had vanished when her parents were fatally shot in a rural Wisconsin town.
A 16-year-old caught on the front lines in Syria had been taken by his mother to the battle zone when he was 12, his sister and American officials said.
The teenager, whose capture was announced by the Syrian Democratic Forces, would be the only American minor apprehended fighting on behalf of the Islamic State on the battlefield.
This Opinion essay writer states, “As a teenager, crushes were my religion. I obsessed over boys from a born-again Christian youth group like a fanatic, and I found peace in this faith.”
“As a queer, closeted teenager, I had to learn about romance from the sidelines. A decade later, I’m still struggling to get in the game,” writes Garrett Schlichte in a Modern Love essay.
Why rugby? Because its tackling techniques emphasize use of the shoulder, which increasingly appeals to football coaches leery of concussions. Even in Texas.
Andrew Barth Feldman, a high school junior on Long Island, is an ardent theater fan who has been acting since he was 8. Now he’ll be leading the cast in his favorite show.
“Let’s keep it there,” say the writers of this Opinion essay, co-founders of a nonprofit that uses art to empower young people to end violence against girls and women.
In new novels by Brenda Woods, Dan Gemeinhart, Alicia D. Williams and more, young protagonists learn the hard way that adults don’t have all the answers.
When I was younger, the term “boredom” rarely came out of my life. I was an energetic little kid with an incredibly creative mind, and could easily occupy myself with totally random things for long periods of time. If I had friends with me, that boredom really ceased to exist. If I ever blurted out “I’m bored” as a kid, it was probably because I was being dragged along to an activity or event that I didn’t want to be a part of. However, as I have gotten older, I’ve noticed that I have been bored a lot more often. Mainly, I tend to associate my hunger with being bored and I raid the fridge and pantry, which makes my mom crazy. I have become much more introverted, and tend to hang out with the same few people every day.
As I turned into a teenager, and as technology advances, boredom definitely changed for me. When I am bored, I am usually just playing on my phone for a while. Now, when I was younger, I could play with my barbies and make up stories, or play “family” with my sisters. Basically, I could make the most out of a blank space of area, whereas now I expect things to be laid out for me, and there is no creativity involved. Sure, boredom does lead to creativity and self sufficiency, but it just isn’t the same with technology.
When I was six and I complained about being “bored” my mom would make me do a puzzle, or work or school related games. Although they weren’t always the most fun, I knew that if I mentioned I was bored, my mom would give me something to do. As I’ve gotten older, this sort of control has vanished quite a bit. Now if I tell my mom I’m bored (which I rarely do), she’ll either roll her eyes or give me a task so unbearable that next time I would solve my boredom alone.
To me boredom is only up to one person, you. You can sit around all day and complain about how bored you are or you can do something about it. There are so many things out in the world that you have never done before you just need to go out there and explore. It’s not possible for a human to be bored unless they choose to be bored.
I try to avoid boredom at all costs by constantly using my phone, gaming, talking to friends, etc. The only time I used to allow myself to be bored was going to sleep, laying in bed waiting. But over my years of learning how to avoid boredom, I learned that if I use my phone long enough, and make myself tired enough, I can fall asleep immediately. I know this is a problem because I think best when I am bored, but I can’t. Sorry to myself I guess.
When I’m bored, I tend to think. I am a very thoughtful person, and there’s almost always one crazy thought or another running through my brain. However, boredom leads to long trails of thinking, so captivating, amazing, and wonderful, and by the time you snap out of it you forget where you started.
Another mental habit of mine is “listening to music.” If I have a song memorized, I will play it back in my brain from start to finish, almost as if I am listening to the song. Just as I’m always thinking about something, there is always music in my head. Right now it’s “Lights Down Low,” but earlier it was “Pure Imagination” and “Girls Like You.”What I’m trying to say is, boredom truly is a great thing. Not only does it cause you to develop creativity and self-sufficiency, it also lets you discover your greatest source of entertainment: you.
