Mini Manifesto...
The best comment I ever received from a teacher came from my freshman expository writing professor at Harvard. She handed back my final essay free of any markings but for a few words scribbled at the end. "A," it said, "See me for rewrites." I immediately scheduled a conference and reworked the paper for exactly no extra credit.
The second-best comment I ever received came from my first-grade teacher. She handed back a spelling quiz bleeding red ink. "9 out of 20," it said, "Nice improvement! Let's review diphthongs."
The best teachers inspire us to go farther than we think we can, and help us to develop the skills to get there.
As a little kid, I was curious, smart, sick a lot, and dyslexic; I wanted to learn, but it took me a few years to figure out how. I was fortunate that my school recognized my potential and put me in a room with some committed specialists who helped me develop my learning style. I thrived at some of the most rigorous schools in the country, and while it was never easy for me, I grew to love the process of learning, the act of thinking.
Now I'm an actor and a writer and a teacher. I learn and think for a living, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm hugely grateful to the teachers and mentors who helped me refine my unique process. It ain't perfect, but it works for me!
Here's the thing - there is no perfect student, and there is no perfect process. See, curriculums and pedagogies are designed around a mythical, archetypal learner, a sort of Platonic ideal of a student with a 55-minute attention span who writes and processes equally well in a notebook or on a laptop, a student who takes in information from multiple sources and can organize it linearly, a student for whom thinking and writing are the same language, a student who functions equally well at 8:05 AM and 4:45 PM, and has no problem transitioning from English to Math to French to Soccer to Physics, a student who can problem-solve silently but can also articulate their process immediately, a student who can take in information at a constant rate but wait until the end of the lesson to ask a question. And I'm not cracking on schools here - that's how they have to do it to serve hundreds or thousands of students in a single day. But that student, that ideal student, doesn't exist!
​
So, what can you do?
​
You can excel! You can learn the skills of close reading and analysis, and you can learn to think and write and express yourself in clear, direct, unique ways that will resound and shake the foundations!
​
This isn't really about me anymore, is it? Well, no, it's not - it's about you.
​
Look, our world is changing, and as AI sweeps in, clarity and depth of thought, clarity and depth of communication, are more vital than ever. And not just in school, but in business and civic life, in relationships and in media, too. To be authentic, to be original, and ultimately to manifest the effect you want to have on the world, you have to think well and write well. I can help you raise the bar.