French Dada artist Marcel Duchamp took a porcelain urinal, turned it upside down, signed it “R. Mutt,” and called it Fountain which was displayed at the 291 Art Gallery in 1917. Maurizio Cattelan’s 2016 America project for the Guggenheim Museum was a fully functioning 18-karat gold toilet. …

Finding a mentor for your academic or professional career can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. First of all, you don’t have to find one mentor who will guide you for the rest of your life. In fact, as I discuss in more detail below, I encourage you…

Staying in touch with your network doesn’t have to be difficult. If you find networking repulsive and want to recoil when faced with a networking event, it helps to reframe your thinking about networking. Networking can be done through thoughtful acts of service to others. Here are some things to…

There are activities we have to do that we’re not always thrilled about doing. What are the things we can do to make ordinary and boring tasks better? Here are some tips: we can tweak the task, pair a neutral or disagreeable task with something positive, reduce the friction between…

I’ve written a lot of bad poetry recently — haikus, to be more specific. And even though these haikus may never see the light of day on Medium or elsewhere, I will staunchly defend writing bad poetry and pursuing other creative outlets (badly or otherwise) because I need to do…

I had grand plans for 2022. One of those plans was to write more. At first, I wasn’t writing as much as I intended because I was busy. No matter, I thought, I will make it up later. Then life challenge after life challenge piled up. My place got flooded…

Last year, I joined Medium and was part of the Medium Partnership Program. Then the rules changed, which meant that if I were to stay in the Medium Partnership Program I would need 100 followers by the end of 2021. I was hoping to organically reach 100 followers by writing…

Around this time last year as 2020 was coming to a close and I was looking ahead to 2021, I thought about ways to create fun things to look forward to throughout the year that would allow me to challenge myself and grow while also making sure whatever I created…

In November (before the Omicron variant was discovered), I flew for the first time since the pandemic. Prior to that, my last flight anywhere was in the summer of 2019 when I flew abroad. I was surprised by how much I forgot despite being fairly well traveled. In an effort…