Coping with loneliness through solitude

“Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal.” Ralph Waldo Emerson In an episode of the TV show Gilmore Girls from the early 2000s, Alexis Bleidel’s character, Rory Gilmore, gets caught up in a scandal for breaking into her school with a group of girls in the middle of the night as part of a hazing ritual.…

Read More

Neutral Doesn’t Work When Talking About Race

When people take a “neutral position” on race, it doesn’t work. This describes the main finding of a study I explored in my doctoral dissertation at University of California, Los Angeles. The study, conducted in 2020 and guided by Pedro Noguera, consisted of in-depth interviews with 30 recent alumni of color, representing Black, Latinx, and…

Read More

Slowing down daily life in a virtual age

“Heads up bro, we got problems,” said Leon in the 2001 Fast and Furious movie. And yes, we got problems — we are downright getting dumber. To no surprise, our attention spans are decreasing, too. A goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. The average human attention span? Eight, down from 12 in 2000.…

Read More