Three weeks ago, a PhD candidate defended her dissertation over Zoom with audio so bad it sounded like she was speaking from inside a washing machine. The connection kept cutting out. Her microphone crackled. Background noise bled through constantly. What happened, you think? She got through it brilliantly. Because she’d structured her argument so clearly—problem, […]

There is something that most organizations get wrong about communicating their corporate social responsibility work: they talk about what they did instead of who they impacted. They announce programs launched, funds distributed, and initiatives rolled out. They measure return on investment. They showcase organizational accomplishment. And in doing so, they completely miss the transformative power […]

Structured reasoning determines how intelligent people think you are. Not what you know. Not how creative you are. Not how hard you’ve worked, but how clearly you organize and present your thinking. This is non-negotiable. Your emails get read or ignored based on it. Your essays earn distinctions or mediocre grades based on it. Your business […]

Last semester, I watched a talented graduate student lose a research assistant position she deserved. She had the qualifications. She’d done the work. But in the interview, when the professor asked for her thoughts on the project, she paused. Five seconds. Ten seconds. The professor interpreted her silence as uncertainty and moved on to the next […]

Here’s something I’ve been noticing: some of my undergraduate students can’t tell me who the Minister of Communications is, but they can quote three different podcast hosts on media literacy. They skip assigned textbook chapters, but they’ve listened to eight hours of podcast content on the same topic. When I ask them where they learned about […]