I’m on the phone with my grandfather, but I’m also in a battle against my own mind. My laptop screen is on my left and my smartphone is on my right, both appealing to check. I can feel my resolve crumbling. My fingers drum on the desk, and I have to physically turn away from...

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When you’re on a journey alone, everything is up to you. While this can give you great flexibility, it also comes with its own challenges. If you feel tired, you need to find the internal will to keep going. If you feel blocked, you need to figure out what to do next. If you feel...

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It’s very, very easy for me to come up with narratives about other people. Some are based on evidence, some are based on fleeting impressions, and some (in my lesser moments) are based on conversations several degrees removed from the person in question. But if I think about it, I expect only a tiny fraction...

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Think of a topic you really understand. One where your understanding is so clear that you know there’s no other way it could be. Here’s the thing: Not everyone feels the same! Many people might even be confused about it. There’s an opportunity here for teaching, for giving others the gift of what you see...

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I used to be confused as to why anyone would choose to run. For those who have come to know me since then, this probably sounds unbelievable. I’m likely near the top of their list of people they associate with the word “runner”. But running wasn’t always like that for me. In fact, I found...

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“Wait, stop! Freeze!” Shane shouts. I’m thinking the same thing. Shane’s older than me by decades, but you wouldn’t know it from the enthusiasm he has for basketball. Despite being a little sick and there only being four girls who showed up for our off-season basketball clinic, Shane’s love of basketball shines through. It shows...

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What is the work we do as educators? “Transfer information” may be the instinctual response, but I want to argue this is wrong, and we’re past the stage where this could have been enough. The short reason is that there are simply too many high quality resources available for learners. From textbooks, blogs, online courses,...

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One of my favourite parts about mathematics is its definitive nature. Once you’ve proved a result, it’s true for all of time. We can be confident that the chain of reasoning will hold, even without inspecting every part. This feature of mathematics has let us build incredible structures, and as a bonus, tools to help...

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When I was completing my master’s degree, I was excited to be working on new research. While some students in my cohort worked on understanding the literature, my supervisor gave me a novel project we thought we could eventually publish it. The concept was simple and straightforward, motivating me to build the experiments, collect the...

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How much do you read in a day? How much do you remember? As a scientist, one of my main jobs is reading papers. This is to learn about new work in my field, understanding the methods of others, and getting ideas for my own work. I also love reading fiction, which I do every...

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