Yesterday, my wife and I were discussing the firing of yet another CEO for sexual harassment, and she explained, “This is fear I live with every day. It’s a real issue for women.” I was horrified that my wife, whom I love and respect and honor, cannot trust other men…

Life Pivot #13: Taking another step into Machine Learning. The basic parts every ML algorithm needs. — Since ML and Robots and AI are the future, part of my pivot is to learn as much as I can about these fields. Machine Learning seems to be an accessible starting point, as much as anything around all this is “accessible”. About a month ago, I took my first…

When less is more. And Quality Beats Quantity. — I recently started classes again–which is why the posts have been less frequent–and piano lessons. I’ve been playing piano on and off since I stopped studying formally in high school, but I had found the practice very soothing, so I wanted to get back into it. …

Life Pivot Post #12: Here are 3 ways I’ve taken responsibility for my own learning, and how they differ from what is considered normal approaches to learning. — When I’m working with a student on material they aren’t familiar with, they will sometimes just stop and wait for me to tell them what to do. Often, they simply don’t know what the correct process is, but the weird thing is that they don’t ask me any questions. …

Life Pivot Post #11: I’d always heard that the only person holding me back was myself, but I didn’t really understand what that meant until tonight, when I learned to overcome it. — I just stepped out of another one of Ken’s tortuous math midterms. While it only contained five questions, it lasted three hours, and entailed me redoing every question at least twice. At one point, when I had already gone through the entire test without successfully answering a single question, I…

Life Pivot Post #10 — Happy 10-post anniversary! You’re probably wondering what the subtitles refer to if you’ve been following me this far. While it’s true that I started writing these after a class I’m taking for a career transition, the pivot in question actually refers to a different approach to living my life, a…

Life Pivot Post #9 — After producing megabytes of inspirational writing, I’ve found I’ve lost my taste for it in the last few years. At first, I really do think I managed to ingest all the motivation, though my life was full of strife nonetheless. When things didn’t get easier, I found it hard to…

Life Pivot Post #8 — When I was a kid, I had a lot of stuffed animals, about 50 of them. At first, I only had two: Flour the Raccoon, and his trusty sidekick, Puppy the…Puppy. But over the years, I collected more and more. They filled an entire second bed in my room. Each…

Life Pivot Post #7 — “I am comfortable starting from scratch, feeling stupid, embarrassing myself, and failing a lot.” As I have spent a lot of time looking for a job recently, I know that one of the most desirable traits in applicants is the ability to learn new skills quickly. I find this sort…