#the epic highs and lows of my academic career

[twelverriver]

rare academic win i DID pass an exam i thought i'd have to retake??? rare academic win for jana twelverriver <3 literally walked around for a full month thinking i failed it... this is a fun twist <3

[talesofpanem]

The Interview

Author: @xerxia31

Rating: T for potty language, adult situations, mentions of substance abuse and minor character death.

Summary: This has all the makings of the most uncomfortable job interview of all time.

Author’s note: This is for the prompt ‘work’, but I just couldn’t get it done on time. Thank goodness for make-up week!

————

It feels like entering another world, driving through the grounds of the west campus. Everything is wide open, lush, green, alive, a huge contrast to the dirty and crowded city where I’ve been living for the past two years.

There are young people everywhere on the expansive lawns, throwing frisbees or leaning against trees with books or binders in hand, and not a cellphone to be seen. It’s like a utopian fantasy world, on the surface.

But I know better.

I pull up to the building where my appointment will be. Grey stone, old, but not yet old enough to be considered classic. Its architectural failings have been compensated for by brightly-painted window trim and shutters, and climbing vines clinging to the stones, bursting with purple flowers. Elegant, but only if you don’t look too closely. For all of its window dressing, it’s an institution.

I’d been instructed to wait in the lobby, arranged as a waiting room of sorts. It’s little more than a dozen chairs ringing the area, facing the double set of interior doors, faded industrial carpet underfoot. I settle into one, the sun-hardened vinyl squeaks in protest. The walls are covered with inspirational posters, pictures of sunsets and mountaintops with words of wisdom in bold print underneath. Motivation. Persistence. Achievement. 

“Mr. Mellark?” 

I jump to my feet as a young woman with glossy black ringlets enters the room where I’ve been cooling my heels for twenty minutes. She smiles at me. “They’re ready for you now.”

Taking a deep, cleansing breath, I wipe my hands on my suit pants before picking up my portfolio. I can’t remember the last time I was this nervous about anything. Young Peeta Mellark was an outgoing, gregarious fellow. But I haven’t been that guy in a very long time.

The doors close behind me, electronic locks snapping ominously. 

The young woman, Rue, she tells me her name is, leads me along a dim corridor, the floors polished to gleaming, reflecting scattered pools of light. “We only use emergency lighting in the offices on the weekends,” she confides. “Budget…” I nod. The schools where I worked while finishing my master’s degrees had all struggled with budgets too. Education is not a career that is steeped in money.

But working with children is what I’ve chosen. And this job, at this particular school, is the one I want more than anything.

Art therapist at the Panem Institute.

The Panem Institute is the preeminent residential facility for kids in trouble, kids struggling with substance abuse issues or mental health disorders. And unlike most centres of its kind, lack of funds is not a barrier to admission.

I can’t help wondering how different my life might have turned out if I’d had access to a place like this when I was a teen. Would I be established now, with a life I could be proud of? A wife, maybe even a family of my own?

Instead, I’m thirty, with a shiny new double MA in social work and art therapy, and precious little in the way of resumé experience. That the institute is even meeting with me is almost miraculous. Apart from student placements and volunteer work, I have almost nothing to show for my life.

But I want this job so badly I can almost taste it. This job, this place– this is why I’ve worked so hard the past six years, for the chance to make up for my own failings.

My childhood wasn’t fantastic, but it was typical by most measures. The youngest of three children, I was born upstate, in a quintessential white-washed all-American small town where everyone knew everyone else. My parents didn’t get along, but they stuck it out for the sake of us boys, which is retrospect was probably far, far worse for us than if they’d simply split.

Instead, beaten down by a life she hated and a town she couldn’t escape, my mother was cold, and often rough with us. Rye, Brann and I learned young to hide from her temper. She, in turn, hid in a bottle.

My dad, though, was my hero, mine and my brothers’ too. He coached our little league teams, came to every one of our wrestling matches, filled our lives with cookies and hugs. Shielded us from mother’s ever-increasing drunken and violent episodes.

Then midway through my senior year of high school, the unthinkable happened. My father, my kind, generous father, was murdered. Shot by some punk barely older than I was, killed for nothing more than the two hundred dollars in the cash register of the small family bakery my father owned.

I was devastated.

There was no one left to moderate my mother’s behaviour with my father gone and my brothers away at school. Down to one final obligation, freedom in sight, she made it her sole purpose in life to be rid of me as well. Or maybe she was just drowning in grief and alcoholism and wasn’t even aware of how she was acting, a theory my brother broached at the time. Whatever the reason, life at home deteriorated. Badly.

And like my mother, I sought refuge in a bottle. Or many, many bottles.

I’d already been offered a college wrestling scholarship based on my earlier performances. A good thing since I showed up at the state wrestling championship - my last ever high school wrestling meet and the first one where my father wasn’t a spectator - hungover as hell, or maybe still a little drunk, and ended up placing second.

College was supposed to be my escape, but by the time I got to State that September, I was far more interested in getting bombed than in studying or practicing. 

Over the course of a year, I destroyed every dream I’d ever had, every hope, every plan, every relationship. I alienated every friend, every mentor, even, eventually, my own brothers.

And I hadn’t even cared.

Twelve years later, I’ve clawed my way back, one sober day at a time, through more ups and downs than I can even remember. Fought to become a man my father would have been proud of. But I didn’t do it alone. Therapists and counsellors helped me heal, and in doing so showed me how satisfying it could be to guide someone back from the brink, to help set them on the right path.

And that’s why I’m here now, standing sweaty-palmed but hopeful at the door of a boardroom. Interviewing for a job where I could change the lives of troubled young people like I once was.

My escort, Rue, pulls the door open and gestures for me to enter. The room is small and much brighter than the hallway, with a pair of large windows and pale wood reflecting the warm afternoon light. It takes me a moment to adjust to the brightness, to focus on the group of people waiting for me.

Then the bottom drops out of my stomach, and out of my world.

I never got blackout drunk. Consequently, I remember every stupid decision I made, every assholish word I said. And the recipient of one of the tirades I regret most is sitting across the table, her ebony hair pulled back in an elegant chignon. 

Katniss Everdeen.

She and I went to school together, from kindergarten all the way through until I ruined my life. I had the worst crush on her back then. But until after we graduated from high school, she didn’t even know I was alive.

Imagine my shock when, a few months into my ill-fated college career, I ran into her at a party on campus. I’d had no idea she went to the same school. But I was well into a bottle of Bombay that night, and what should have been the start of an epic relationship, or at least a chance for me to talk to the girl I’d lusted after always, turned into a nightmare.

I was already slipping then, already on academic probation, already suspended from the wrestling team and constantly in trouble with my coaches. I was weeks away from losing everything - my scholarship, my sport, my friends. And every encounter with my professors, with my academic advisor, with the counsellor the athletic department had insisted on, every single one had impressed on me that I wasn’t good enough, though I am, in retrospect, certain that’s not what any of them had meant. But I’d had so much anger in my system then, so much loathing. 

And Katniss, beautiful, seemingly unattainable Katniss, for some reason seeing her there triggered the deepest well of self pity to open in my chest. She was, in that moment, the embodiment of everything I’d been told I could never have. My gut clenches and my heart hurts as I remember the vitriol I’d spewed at her that night, the accusations about her character and motivations, every one of them utterly untrue. I’d called her stuck-up, selfish, a bitch, among so many other words. Katniss, beautiful, stoic Katniss hadn’t reacted at all, apart from a widening of her eyes and maybe a slight trembling of her lower lip. When I’d run out of filth to throw her way, she’d simply blinked and said softly, “This isn’t you, Peeta.” Then she’d walked away.

I have heard those words in my head a thousand times since that night. 

It had taken another three years of couch-surfing and homelessness, of lying and begging and stealing to feed my addiction, before I finally hit rock-bottom. In an alley in the Capitol, with a bunch of other low-life scum just like me, I’d listened as they made plans to rob a convenience store a few blocks away. So desperate was I for the few bucks it would have garnered me that I was ready to go along with them… until I saw the gun.

The idea of robbing a little mom-and-pop convenience store at gunpoint was my come to Jesus moment. I was hunched in filth, hungry and so desperate for a drink that I was steps away from becoming the man who had killed my father.

The road back from that point wasn’t straight, and it wasn’t easy. I’d like to say that I never had another drink after that, but it’d be a lie. But I’ve been sober now for seven years and forty-four days, a purple medallion in my pocket reminds me every day how far I’ve come.

As does Katniss’s voice in my head, reminding me when I feel weak, when the cravings hit hard, that I’m not that person.

But she doesn’t know that. Looking across the table, she must be seeing the asshole who treated everyone, and especially her, like dirt.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Mellark,” an older, balding man says, smiling. I recognize his voice, Plutarch Heavensbee, the institute’s director, with whom I’ve spoken on the phone several times before today. I hesitate though, steeling myself to meet Katniss’s eyes. If she looks uncomfortable I’ll leave. It wouldn’t be fair to her if I stayed. As disappointing as it’ll be to walk away from this opportunity that I want so damned badly, I have only myself to blame.

I catch her gaze, silver pools in the sunlight, expecting her to be glaring at me. She’s not though, her expression is carefully neutral. But as if she sees the question in my glance, she nods.

Plutarch introduces the others in turn; Reza Seder, head of counselling services, Dr. Lavinia DeSantis, head of medical services, Alma Coin, head of security. “And of course you know Ms. Everdeen,” Plutarch says, his smile widening, and I can feel my eyebrows crawling up to my hairline. She knew I was coming, told the others that she knew me, and yet I’m still here. They’re still going to interview me.

“Hello, Peeta,” she says, in that smoky smooth bourbon voice that has acted as my conscience for years. And, okay, has narrated my fantasies too, if I’m being honest.

“I’ve already disclosed to the board that we grew up together,” she continues, “and they’re okay with my presence. But of course I’ll leave if it makes you uncomfortable having me here.” Her words and delivery are coolly professional, but beneath them I hear a faint note of pleading. She wants to be here, I just know it. And though I’m likely signing the death warrant on this job, I find myself asking her to stay.

This has all the makings of the most uncomfortable job interview of all time. But if I’ve learned anything from my primary therapist, Dr. Aurelius, it’s that I can’t run from my past. And if I’ve learned anything from AA, it’s that I can’t ignore my shortcomings.

Each member questions me, softballs to start - my education, my job experiences, my plans. I pull out my portfolio, walk them through the educational and therapeutic programs I’ve developed, outline what worked during my previous placements, what innovations I’d like to employ. They seem impressed, and I start to relax. 

“You didn’t go to college right after high school, Mr. Mellark?” Alma Coin asks, her strange, pale eyes cold and judgemental. I stiffen; this is where previous interviews have gone off the rails. I’d never outright lie about my addiction, but I’m not keen to bring it up either. Even seven years sober, people are reluctant to entrust an alcoholic to watch over children.

“That’s correct,” I tell her. “I didn’t start my undergrad until I was twenty-four.”

“Why is that?” I could tell her that I couldn’t afford it until then, that’s true, or about my father’s death throwing a spanner in my plans, also true.

Katniss is looking at me, grey eyes wide and guileless. She nods again, and it feels like encouragement. I know what I have to say.

“I’m an alcoholic,” I tell them, bracing for their reactions. But nobody flinches. “I’ve been sober for seven years. But I started drinking in high school, and I lost a lot of years to the disease.” Across from me, a hint of a smile graces Katniss’s pouty peach lips. I take it as my cue to keep going. “That’s why I went into social work, and why I want to work here so much. To help kids like me. To maybe save some of them from the mistakes I made.”

There are nods around the table, no one looks particularly surprised. I don’t know whether Katniss has told them, or if it came up in my background check.

“And you’re not concerned that working with addicted children might trigger you to revisit your own demons? Your CV is completely lacking in experience with troubled youth.” It’s true, my field placements were all in middle schools, my experience as an art therapist mostly with kids with ADHD or autism spectrum disorders. The kids here by and large have much more complex issues, abuse and addiction and mental illness all compounded, often violent and criminal backgrounds too. 

“I’ve spent years in therapy learning to cope with my triggers,” I tell Coin.

“That’s not the same as real-world experience,” Seder interjects. “These kids, the things they tell you, the things they’ve seen. It’s gutting.”

“I realize that,” I tell her, affecting the most professional tone I’m capable of despite the cavern that’s opened in my stomach, the knowledge that I’m nowhere near qualified enough in their eyes. “I completed a research project on intergenerational addiction in college and interviewed hundreds of young addicts.”

“That’s really not the same as interacting with them day to day,” Seder says, and it’s not cruel, but it feels dismissive.

“I also observed troubled youth in counselling during my practicum while I was in graduate school.” They know this, it’s in my resumé, along with letters of reference from the clinician supervisors. But Seder is shaking her head and Coin looks unimpressed and I can feel the opportunity slipping away.

“Peeta has volunteered as a mentor at the Children’s Hospital’s substance abuse treatment program for more than three years,” Katniss interjects, and every hair on my body stands on end. Because while that’s true, it’s also something that’s not in my resumé, something I’ve avoided self-reporting because it’s common knowledge that the program volunteers are all addicts in recovery themselves.

I have no idea how she knows that.

My gaze snaps to Katniss. Her expression remains carefully neutral, but there is the barest hint of a smile in her silver eyes.

“That’s an excellent program,” Dr. De Santis says, looking up from her notes for the first time. “They’re incredibly selective about who they choose to work with their clients.” 

“They are,” I agree. The screening had been brutal, but it had been necessary, so many of those kids have lead lives that make mine look like a walk in the park and many are not shy about sharing all of the horrific details. “They can’t risk having the volunteers drop out or relapse. The kids need the stability of knowing that they can’t scare away their mentors. So many of them have had everyone else in their lives give up on them.” I swallow hard; it’s the reason I volunteer there. I’ve seen myself in so many of their faces, kids who use alcohol and drugs to escape the pain, kids who lash out and push away the people around them before those people can abandon them. Like I’d done to my teachers and coaches, my friends and my brothers.

Like I’d done to Katniss, all of those years ago.

“How do you find your personal experiences impact your work with those children?” Katniss asks, a gently leading question, and one for which I am so grateful.

“I can empathise with them in ways that their doctors and case workers often can’t,” I say, mostly tamping down the waver in my voice. Four sets of eyes watch me intently. “It’s the whole basis for the program, giving these kids not only guidance, but hope for their future. If I can succeed after all of my mistakes, after all I’ve done, then they can too.”

“And you intend on continuing to volunteer there?” Coin asks.

“I do.” I’ve already checked with the hospital about whether this job would constitute a conflict of interest, they assured me it would not.

Across the table, each of the interviewers smiles, even Coin, though her smile looks a little less genuine. But I only have eyes for Katniss. Because her smile feels like forgiveness. And though this is my dream job, I feel like even if I don’t get it I’ve accomplished something monumental here. I’ve shown Katniss that she was right, that nasty boy who hurt her, who made her feel small and alone, that person wasn’t me.

Plutarch claps his hands. “Excellent, my boy,” he says. “Now let’s talk salary.”

“I… what?” 

“For the position.” At my expression, he laughs. “The interview is really just a formality,” he says, mirth twinkling in his eyes. “The job is yours if you want it.” He pushes a couple of papers across the table. A contract. “I know it’s a little less in salary than you’d make in private practice, but we offer a comprehensive benefits package. Take a couple of days to look it over and let us know.”

I don’t need a couple of days. I don’t need a couple of minutes. “I want the job,” I tell him firmly.

“Well then,” Plutarch booms with evident pleasure. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Mellark.” He reaches across to shake my hand firmly, and I can’t help my goofy grin. I got the job!

Plutarch informs me that their admin will get in touch with me over the next few days to file the tax and legal paperwork they need, and then I’ll begin at the start of the new term, some four weeks away. And I nod in all the right places, but my mind is spinning so fast I’m almost dizzy with it.

I shake each of their hands in turn, lingering just a bit longer to squeeze Katniss’s hand tightly. I thank each of them, but my gratitude to her means more. I think she can tell.

“Could you see Mr. Mellark out?” Plutarch asks Katniss, and she agrees, though she doesn’t meet my eyes. 

I follow her silently down the corridor, towards the exit, the delicate tapping of her heels on linoleum almost drowned out by the pounding of my pulse in my ears. Katniss was a cute kid, tiny and scrappy, and she had morphed into a fierce and self-possessed young woman  by the time we’d graduated high school. But now, at thirty, she’s an absolute bombshell. Still lean, but with delicate curves that her pencil skirt and blouse highlight perfectly. She walks with confidence, back straight, head held high. She’s more intimidating than ever.

At the electronic doors, she pauses, hand poised just above the lever that would release the locks. Then she sighs, and glances back at me over her shoulder. “Would you like to have a cup of tea with me? Catch up?” I’m nearly rendered speechless; not only is Katniss Everdeen willing to work with me, she’s willing to talk with me too. 

“I’d like that,” I rasp, the first words I’ve spoken directly to her in twelve long years.

She leads me back into the building and up a set of stairs. Another corridor stretches in front of us, windowless doors set close together. “Our offices,” she says. Partway down the hall, she stops and pulls a set of keys from her pocket. A small brass plate on the door reads Katniss Everdeen, Lead Addictions Therapist.

Her office is small, and appears to be set up for both paperwork and individual counselling sessions with a tiny desk tucked back into the corner but comfortable looking couches dominating the space. She confirms my guess. “I see the lower risk kids here,” she says. “It feels less institutional that way.”

I can only stare, stunned, as she unlocks a cabinet and withdraws a tea kettle. I knew Katniss’s title here from Plutarch’s introduction of course. But until now, it hadn’t really sunk in, what she does. She’s an addictions counsellor. How utterly incredible that she went into the very field that eventually inspired my own career path.

“Sit, please,” she says over her shoulder. I slip off my blazer, draping it over the arm of the couch, then sink into plush microfibre. The ceramic clink of teacups and spoons and the sultry sway of her perfect posterior as she putters, preparing tea and humming just faintly are almost hypnotic. For all of the times I’d thought about Katniss Everdeen, I never imagined I’d ever actually see her again, and good lord she’s so much hotter than even my edgiest fantasies. “Black, right?” she says, snapping me out of my lurid thoughts.

“Uh, yeah,” I say after a moment’s pause where I try to pull myself together and remember that she’s making tea, so that we can talk. So that I can apologize to her. As glorious as her ass is, I have no business looking at her that way. I lost any possible chance I might have had a dozen years ago.

But she knows how I take my tea. The last time I saw her, gin was the only thing I was drinking.

She sets a red mug in front of me, on the low table between the couches. But she herself sits beside me, instead of across from me, which surprises me. Though maybe it shouldn’t, since she’s a therapist. Knowing how to set someone at ease is part of her training. It’s backfiring in my case though, since her closeness feels intimate. I catch a hint of her scent, something fresh and green but with a little bit of spice, like a campfire in the woods. So perfectly Katniss. “How have you been?” she says, sipping from her own mug.

“Better,” I tell her, because she’s not asking to make small talk. In addition to knowing everything I confessed in the interview, she was there when my world fell apart, she saw first hand how shitty I was.

“I’m glad,” she says softly, and she smiles, and it’s so beautiful and sweet it nearly breaks my heart.

“I am so sorry,” I tell her, but the words are completely inadequate. How do you tell someone that they are not only your biggest regret, but also your biggest inspiration? “For how I treated you when I was drinking. You didn’t deserve any of that, and I have regretted it every day.”

“I know,” she says. 

“And what you did for me today,” I continue before my nerve runs out. “I can’t begin to thank you. You not only gave me this chance when you could have told any of them I wasn’t worth considering, but you actively helped me in the interview.”

“You earned the job, Peeta. Plutarch was already convinced before you even walked in the door.”

“The others weren’t.”

She laughs. “I knew Lavinia would love you. And Alma, well, she doesn’t really like anyone, but I have a feeling you’ll win her over eventually.”

“What about you?” I can’t help asking. She’s treating me so kindly, but she can’t possibly have forgiven me. I know she hasn’t forgotten. 

“I believe in second chances.” Her smile is softer, a little pained. “I knew you’d find your way back.”

“I was such a dick.”

“You were,” she agrees. “But I knew that wasn’t you.”

“You said that back then too,” I tell her, my tea forgotten. “I, uhm.” My neck feels hot and I rub it distractedly. “I hear you saying that, when I’m having a difficult day. It’s helped me so much over the years. You’ve helped me more than you’ll ever know.” It’s embarrassing as hell to admit that. But she deserves the truth.

She snorts, and it’s a sound so at odds with her elegant presentation and with the seriousness of our conversation. My gaze snaps up to her face, she looks amused and abashed. 

“You’re the reason I went into psychology,” she says, and my eyebrows shoot up to my hairline. “I was a biology major first year. But seeing how everyone failed you after your dad died, and how easy it was for you to fall…” she trails off. “And then when you came back to school to try again, sober and working so hard, I knew I’d made the right choice.”

“You were there?” 

She nods. “Just for a semester. I was finishing my masters. I saw you a couple of times on campus, but you never noticed me.”

Honestly, that’s probably for the best. That early in my recovery I was still so fragile, just getting through classes took every bit of effort I had, and I spent so many hours with my sponsor and therapist back then I had no time for anyone else. “I wish I’d known,” I tell her. “But I had my head pretty far up my own ass.”

“You didn’t though.” She looks away, towards the tiny, narrow window on the exterior wall, barred, like all of the windows I’ve seen in this building. “I watched you. I’ve kept track of you over the years, when I could. Even then you were already working so hard to make amends.”

I was. And I can tell by that specific word that she knows why. One of the steps in AA is making amends for the shitty things we’ve done, at least where doing so won’t cause any further damage. In those early years, I’d concentrated mostly on my brothers, and earning their trust again. But I also spent time speaking with professors and coaches who I had alienated. It would have been far easier to start over at a different college, and likely would have been less triggering. But it’d have been a coward’s way.

“I never got a chance before now to apologize to you,” I whisper. She’d kept track of me, but I hadn’t made the same effort. Before the booze, Katniss Everdeen was that perfect, unattainable fantasy woman I put on a pedestal and never approached. And after, I locked her away, so terribly ashamed by my actions that I never sought her out, even though she would have been easy to find. I was terrified by how she might look at me.

But she’s clearly a much bigger person than I could ever be.

“I think the time wouldn’t have been right before now,” she says. “For either of us.”

We lapse into silence, Katniss still staring out the window, me fiddling with the mug I’ve picked up again. “Can I ask you something?” she says, and there’s something in her tone that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Of course.”

“That night… why me?” She’s trying to keep her voice even, I can tell, but the slight waver slays me. 

“You were there, and I was a drunken asshole,” I rasp, but she shakes her head, glancing at me.

“It was more than that. The things you said…” she looks away, but not before I see the shine in her eyes. Not before I see the hurt I had been expecting all along. The knowledge that even all of these years later, my words continue to bother her is gut-wrenching. I feel like the biggest piece of shit.

“It was all bullshit, Katniss, the ramblings of an absolute lowlife shit of a human.”

“There’s always truth, even in ramblings,” she says softly. “It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d been called those things. But we’d never even spoken before then. I didn’t know you even knew my name.”

“I knew you, Katniss. I’d always been watching you.” She turns back to me eyebrows raised, confusion in every line of her beautiful face. I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, and I don’t want to make excuses for my absolutely inexcusable behaviour. But she deserves the whole truth. I drop my gaze to my lap. “The truth is, I had a huge crush on you, nearly the whole way through high school.” 

She makes a little choking sound, and I can’t bear to look at her. I know I’m doing unfathomable damage to our potential working relationship, confessing like this. I’ll decline Plutarch’s offer, if being here will hurt her. But I can’t let her think that any of the awful things I said had even a speck of truth to them. I can’t let her take any blame. 

“In senior year,” I continue, “I had finally convinced myself that I was going to talk to you, to ask you to the Valentine’s dance. But then…” I trail off. My father had died at the end of January, and everything else in my life had fallen away, sucked into the black pit of grief.

A soft, cool hand lands on my forearm, and I glance up. Far from looking disgusted, as I was expecting, Katniss is looking at me with compassion, even through her confusion. “When I saw you that night,” I whisper, barely able to get the words out. “I had already screwed up everything else in my life. I was just so angry at the world, but mostly at myself. I was drowning in regret and self-loathing. And you were there, and you were every bit as beautiful as you had always been. And you just represented everything I wanted so badly and had fucked up. My father was gone, my sport was gone, and the girl of my dreams was completely out of my league. And I lost it, lashed out at you instead of at the person who really deserved it. Me.”

“You didn’t deserve it either,” she whispers, and her eyes shine silver under a film of moisture.

I place my hand over hers where it still rests on my arm, and she doesn’t pull away. “I’m truly sorry, Katniss. Hurting you is the biggest regret of my life.” 

“I accept your apology.” I squeeze her hand in gratitude, and a sad half smile ticks at her lips.

“I won’t take the offer,” I murmur, and her brow furrows again. “This is your career, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, being here.”

She shakes her head. “You won’t,” she says. “I’ve been watching you for so long, cheering for you from the sidelines. I feel like I know you. And I know you won’t ever repeat that mistake.”

“I won’t,” I swear. “I’ll always be an alcoholic, and there will always be a risk that I’ll relapse. But I’ve learned so much in therapy, about communication and managing my emotions. About coping. I have better mechanisms now, and a really great support group behind me.” It had taken a long time to make things right with my brothers, but they are my staunchest supporters now. And my sponsor, Haymitch, is a crusty old bastard, but he’d rip out someone’s throat before letting me down.

“Then stay,” she says. “I’d like to start again, if it wouldn’t make you uncomfortable. Build up that friendship we should have had.” She looks down at our hands. At some point, she’d flipped her palm and I’d entwined my fingers with hers.

“Always,” I whisper in awe, and she smiles, that beautiful, elusive smile that I know will be the stuff of all of my future fantasies. And maybe, just maybe, the stuff of my future reality too.

[twinmiki]

Be A Disrupt-Her: An Empowering Conversation With Miki Agrawal

Miki Agrawal, social crusader and entrepreneur, discusses the key to lighting up your life in her book Disrupt-her: A Manifesto for the Modern Woman. Get out a highlight-her and start taking notes -- this interview is as epic as they come...

By Carrie Yang on March 7, 2020, via THE BOSSBABE SOCIÉTÉ

If you haven’t heard the name Miki Agrawal, you might know of some of the businesses she founded: Wild, Thinx, Speax, TUSHY. She’s the author of two books, Do Cool Sh*t and her newest book that just launched, Disrupt-her: A Manifesto for the Modern Woman.

In my conversation with Miki, we delve into HOW she has disrupted so many industries and her own life and HOW she sees opportunities where others can’t.

But first, here’s a brief and impressive rundown if you don’t know Miki Agrawal or her companies.

WHO IS MIKI AGRAWAL?

Miki Agrawal left her career in investment banking to disrupt the restaurant industry in 2006 in her mid-20’s with her gluten-free farm-to-table pizza concept, Wild. She knew that the world and NYC were ready for pizza that was truly better for your body and tasted great years before the “clean eating” and “gluten-free” trend that we’ve recently seen.

Miki then soared to magazine covers when she co-founded Thinx, which disrupted the menstruation market with their patented invention of period panties that you could bleed into that were odorless, wicking, and machine-washable. Thinx became one of the first companies to tackle the then hush-hushed period industry with Miki at the helm. You may remember the iconic grapefruit ad feud with the NYC Subway system. Oh, and they won.

Then there’s Speax, a similar underwear for women who suffer from female incontinence (where you just pee a little) that affects many women including mothers and the elderly.

Now onto TUSHY, the modern attachable bidet company she founded to disrupt the archaic toilet paper industry. This is where I met Miki. I worked with her while I was leading the marketing efforts at TUSHY.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A DISRUPT-HER?

Miki Agrawal is a social crusader and disrupt-her not only in branding, products, and social movements but also in how she lives her personal and public life. In Miki’s newest book, Disrupt-her, she digs into this disrupt-her mindset that’s allowed her to see opportunities in business and daily practices to lead a more fulfilled life.

Disrupt-her digs into 13 areas of our lives that need disruption from money, career, purpose, culture of complaining vs doing, activism, feminism, patriarchy, and more.

This manifesto changed the way I think. It changed my life, and it will change yours. Here’s why…

I asked Miki Agrawal why Disrupt-her and why now? The fire in her voice was contagious.

“In building all of these companies with my teams, Wild, Thinx, Speax, and TUSHY all faced resistance at first. But now look at them, they’re all successful and worth a combined 200 million! People’s first reactions were always no. But the success of these period, pee, and poop companies and just doing things a different way proves society is wrong about a lot of things. And it’s not just these things!

It’s really how we operate, how we think about the things in our lives, relationships, our relationship to stuff and things, the education system, activism, career, money, and the patriarchy and feminism. There’s a societally accepted stance on all of these things. And it’s really difficult to stray from it. Especially when it seems easier to stay in the safe path and not ruffle any feathers. You often see that people are afraid to look beyond that barrier of society. But WHY should we care about staying within these societal boundaries?

“We should be questioning everything!”

We should be shifting culture and moving the world forward. With such a short amount of time on the planet, why should we care about what other people think when we know we’re acting on integrity and really trying to leave the world a better place than we entered? I just want to show everyone that we can be disrupt-hers of our own lives and help make the future better!”

But going against the social barriers is hard, it’s scary, and it’s risky! This is what Miki Agrawal had to say about that.

“Disrupting isn’t about fear. It’s really about courage and eliminating shame.”

“Shame plays a big role in what type of person we should be like what we should look like, what kind of car we should drive, how we should act in front of people etc. Thing is, who’s standards are we thinking about? Once you question everything, you can really start to see the opportunities and where you can really make a difference.”

In this book, you’ll LEARN how to spot disruption within even some of the most common beliefs!

“So many areas of our lives need disruption and it all starts with HOW we question and view the world.”

In her own words, I’ve highlighted some of the most impactful points that Miki discussed in our interview on how to think and be a Disrupt-her.

“Question everything in your life.”

“Disruption is first internal and you have to start by questioning every aspect of your life! To a certain extent, you also have to recognize that everything in our society was made up by our fellow humans before us. From our money system to our education system and to the way we wipe our butts after pooping. Toilet paper was literally invented in the 1800s and in an age where we all have smartphones, we’re still wiping the exact same way with dry paper? When you hop in the shower, you don’t just wipe down with dry paper and call yourself clean. You use water! We use water to clean the rest of our body. Why are we still using dry paper to clean the dirtiest part?  That’s why I started TUSHY.

Also, our modern education system is actually based on the industrial revolution!  We’re still sending kids to school where they learn the same way as they did in the industrial revolution where schools were built to make factory workers for the assembly lines.  Kids are still sitting in uniform desks and learning the same way in the factory era where they wanted kids to follow the rules and do what they’re instructed. But our world now needs creative thinkers and kids who know how to solve the problems we face today. We have to disrupt!

As women especially, we HAVE to disrupt the way we think about money. Finance and money based industries have always been male-dominated, so women have always had a tougher time talking about money. When you realize that money is literally an energy exchange that humans have agreed holds value, then you can really change the way you approach it. It’s not scary or awkward. You just have to invest your money intelligently! Ellevest is a great tool for women to start investing and to really protect their own future.

If you’re wanting to disrupt an industry, start asking questions about WHY that industry does what they do. Why are they still doing something? What can be improved?

Question your own personal beliefs too! Are the things that you believe societal rules or is it something that we truly believe ourselves?  Why should you stay in this safe job? Do you know why are you following this career path? Why do you feel this is what you should do?”

“Follow your own lit path.”

“We only have 21 thousand days left to live after we graduate college! That’s it! Life is simply too short for us to live by a path given to us by society. Instead, we should be living our own path that you should create for yourself. In the Disrupt-her, I call it the lit path. And what I mean by lit path is following and doing the things that light you up! The lit path should be filled with things that you are excited about learning in this world! You should be passionate about your lit path! When you follow your lit path, you should be closer to making an impact that you hope to have on this world.

But even then, you have to always question your actions and your beliefs, so you can make sure you’re following your own true lit path.”

“Surround yourself with a community of champions.”

“In this entrepreneurial journey, I’ve gone through the highs of the highs but also the lows. To maintain my mental wellness, I’ve gotten so much support. From my rock-solid community, partner, and leadership coach. For me, my community of friends are all disrupt-hers in their own way. They all get the plight of what it takes to truly disrupt. In order to be an effective disrupt-her, you’ll need to recognize the people who are championing your ideas, your thoughts, your dreams. Then that’s the people that you need to surround yourself with! Figure out who they are and then schedule meet-ups, hangouts, and just spend time together to lift each other up. There’s just no room for the people that bring you down. None.”

“Rather than complain, come up with solutions!”

“I read this study where they found that people literally get together just to complain about their jobs, bosses, lives.  Rather than getting together and complaining, why don’t we bring people together to come with solutions and ideas, positive uplifting, shifting culture, and not just complain about other people or situations?! If you’re unsatisfied with something in your life, think about it from a more productive angle. Come up with a solution, and do it!

For example, if you have a complaint about something at work. Before you go into your boss’s office to complain, you should think about solutions first and then present the solution and issue to your boss. This way, you’re actually way more valuable at your company and people will want you around more!”

Carrie Yang

Carrie is a co-founder and the Chief Marketing Officer of Sniffle Health, a mobile telemedicine app. Before embarking on the start-up journey, Carrie earned her academic degree in biochemistry and molecular biology with a pursuit of medicine. She turned down her medical school acceptance and worked in finance for a year before realizing she wanted to an active part in growing a company. She’s since led the marketing for a couple of start-up companies including TUSHY and Chef Shuttle, which exited in an multi-million dollar acquisition. Carrie is a firm believer in self-expression and perpetual progress as differentiated thoughts followed by differentiated actions, drive innovation. In the wild, you’ll find Carrie grooving at a concert or music festivals, sparking conversations with strangers about spirituality and business ideas, and eating her way through the world (with extra hot sauce). Connect with me on Instagram: the_cyang

[writetohell]

A Night Out

And it was here, lying on her tummy on the oak branch, flattening herself inward like a moth at rest, that Elena really thought to herself and succumbed to the question that had settled at the back of her mind some three or so days ago: how much longer could I go without sleeping?

The answer (as she had Googled sometime after the 34th hour) would be around 11 days if she were competing with the world record.

At first it seemed neat, like a medal of endurance, when the bursts of creative energy that winded her at 3 AM came to fruition. And then the headaches set in, the blurring figures, the strange ticking jitters that convulsed in her fingers and eyelids like the steady countdown of a time bomb. But if we’re being honest, Elena couldn’t give two shits about her own symptoms. This was personal.

Her sleep had been stolen from her. 

She wasn’t the first, and god knows it was to be expected, judging by the fresh flyers posted around campus at the start of each semester.

GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK – THE KANASHI KNOWS WHEN YOU PULL ALL-NIGHTERS.

EVEN A CAT NAP CAN KEEP THE KANASHI AWAY! STAY AWAKE RESPONSIBLY.

There were even mandatory seminars as a part of all incoming students’ orientation, warning them about the Kanashi and what to do if a Kanashi ever haunted you. 

“They crave leftovers and Doritos,” the speaker, a muscly blond specimen sporting a visor whilst indoors, had instructed. “Really, any kind of midnight munchies you might think of, but Doritos are said to be a favorite.”

All Elena had in her pantry was a stale, half-eaten bag of the limited edition cheeseburger flavor. Now it sat on the dirt below her, her feeble attempt at bait looking like a lazy scrap of litter.

But she hadn’t had time to go to the store. Elena hadn’t had time to do practically anything since the school year started much less hunt down a sleep demon.

Elena looked down at her phone. 4:24 AM. The chiming from the clock tower had long since been silenced. She rubbed at her face, trying to shake off the ultraviolet splotches creeping into her peripherals.

Mom couldn’t know about it. She’d spent all of Elena’s high school career trying to beat this sort of thing out of her, having endured the same type of self-torture for the sake of her own parents.

“Your grandmother wouldn’t let me settle for less than perfection,” Elena’s mother had told her over their last dinner together before she left for college. “I didn’t want you to feel that type of pressure. You’re absolutely perfect the way you are, even if you don’t get all As.”

“I like getting all As,” Elena said, not looking up from her plate. “I like being successful.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Mom said. “Just don’t kill yourself for it. 

The conversation felt backwards to Elena, and made the pancit in her mouth taste sour. She expected more congratulations, more accolades … Not all this fussing 

Mom was not an I-told-you-so kind of person, but she’d certainly shake her head at the sight of Elena now, steadying a line of copper wire between her fingers as she waited in cautious quiet, low in the oak tree.

Leaves crunched.

Elena started, almost toppling her phone over.

The pink-robed figure sidled closer from behind the gnarled trunk of another oak. It looked like a woman witch a hunched back so severe the peak of her spine seemed as if it were drawn by a magnet drifting overhead. Her pale hair was dark at the roots and shrouded her face. She rubbed at her arms as she drew closer, her nails long and painted in complementing shades of crimson. Elena doubted her prey right up until the woman launched her hands into the awaiting Doritos bag like she was diving fist first into a black hole of never ending snackage.

When Elena imagined this moment, she saw herself dropping to the ground with professional assassin-like prowess, sticking the landing like Iron Man, crouching close to the earth with a smarmy smile, ready to engage in epic combat with the Kanashi.

But, of course, she plummeted downward like a dead finch, made an embarrassing squealing noise all the short way down, and landed on her back.

Elena and the Kanashi shared a half second of eye contact.

The Kanashi’s eyes were what gave her away: they were bulbous, took up half of her loose-skinned face, and swam with huge black pools of pupils. It was a scary sight, but Elena might have thought it scarier if the Kanashi had eyelids big enough to blink with.

The Kanashi made a noise like a balloon deflating and whirled into a run, Doritos bag in hand. 

“Not today, bitch,” Elena said under her breath, trying so hard to sound like Bruce Willis, but of course only sounding like an emaciated pixie.

Elena scrambled onto her feet and sprinted as fast as her fatigued body could go. She barreled forward through the forest, almost tripping several times, chasing the Kanashi like they were in a Looney Toons special. But despite her short knobby legs, the Kanashi had the head start. Elena needed to get the jump on her or else risk losing altogether, and missing another night of sleep.

In a moment of dire decisions, as they began to roll downhill toward the park limits and closer to the road where the Kanashi would surely be able to lose Elena in the sparse traffic, Elena gave all her gravity toward her downward trajectory, leaping toward the Kanashi. 

The crest of her flight held for an inhuman amount of time wherein Elena transcended planes and  sprung into thoughts of her childhood, when school first became difficult. She struggled with her multiplication tables in the third grade, and had to see her teacher after school for extra tutoring. When she heard it, she cannot remember, but remembers this one whisper so clearly like a racist little Jiminy Cricket that sat on her shoulder and shoved his nose into her ear.

“I thought Asians were supposed to be good at math.”

Later her white friends would tell her it was a compliment, that it was good racism™? And when she would argue with them, the words would get caught in her throat as they never seemed to grasp what exactly was wrong. Elena pushed herself a little more with each academic year since that first remark as if to say, you want me to box me up? You want me to be smart? Fine. I’ll make all of you look like dumbasses.

Maybe it was the wind in her face as she fell forward. Maybe it was just another symptom of her sleep deprivation. But in that frame right before she landed on the Kanashi, Elena blinked away the tears welling up in her eyes.

Elena fell into the Kanashi like a dead emu.

The landing hurt both of them, but Elena’s exhausted ass pinned the Kanashi to the ground and gave her enough time to wrap the copper around the Kanashi’s wrist.

“Untie me, you lousy shit!” The Kanashi pounded her untethered knuckles into the grass while Elena took a seat on the grass next to the demon. The Kanashi tried to stand up several times, and each time was weighed down by the copper wire around her right wrist so severely that she dropped headfirst into her own ankles.

“Give me my sleep. Now.” Elena felt almost drunk with exhaustion, rolling through these moments in dreary step-by-step flickers.

“Go to hell,” the Kanashi screeched.

As per seminar instructions, Elena then began singing.

“Good morning, starshine! The earth says, hello!”

The Kanashi grappled at her own ears. “Fuck you! No!”

“You twinkle above us! We twinkle below!”

“FINE! Take it! Just fucking take it!”

The Kanashi held out her palm for Elena to see. A compacted ball of sand teetered in the center, glittering in the full moonlight.

Elena plucked it out of the Kanashi’s hand, and cut the wire on her wrist with the pliers she’d stowed away in her back pocket.

The Kanashi propped herself up in a sitting position, pulling her rosy robe in tight before retying the belt. “Now do us both a favor and just get some shitting sleep, you dumb as shit shithead.” 

“Did you ever go to college?” Elena tested.

The Kanashi huffed and folded her arms, looking defiantly back at Elena with those yawning black eyes. “You don’t get out much, do you shithead?” 

Elena gestured at the Kanashi with her other hand. “What would you call this?”

The Kanashi had had enough small talk. She got up and turned on a heel without another word, misting back into the darkness of the low-lying trees from where they had met.

Elena tightened her grip around her little ball of sleep, feeling it roll along her knuckles all the way back to her car. With the doors locked and the seat reclined, she let it hover over her lips, grains of sand sprinkling on her chin, contemplating what consuming one’s own sleep must taste like, before her phone buzzed into life. 

She dug it out of her pocket and squinted at the screen to read it.

“AMERICAN LIT RESEARCH BIBLIOGRAPHY.”

It was a preliminary alarm. The assignment was due in five hours.

Elena sighed. She kissed the ball of sleep between her fingers and stuffed it in her glove compartment before driving back to campus.

[jeroldlockettus]

Why We Choke Under Pressure (and How Not To)

One of the most memorable chokes in sports history: Jean Van de Velde squanders a six-stroke lead on the last hole of the 1999 British Open. (Photo: Ross Kinnaird/Allsport)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Why We Choke Under Pressure (and How Not To).” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

It happens to just about everyone, whether you’re going for Olympic gold or giving a wedding toast. We hear from psychologists, economists, and the golfer who some say committed the greatest choke of all time.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript.

*      *      *

If you’re a big golf fan — and, statistically speaking, you are almost certainly not — but if you are, you know this is the week of the Open Championship, or what Americans call the British Open. It’s the oldest and arguably most important major tournament in golf. This year it’s being held at the Scottish course Carnoustie, which is so difficult it’s often called Car-nasty. Carnoustie also hosted the Open back in 1999.

Brandel CHAMBLEE: The golf course was so hard that it inevitably was going to give us some bizarre conclusion.

That’s Brandel Chamblee. He played on the PGA Tour for 15 years; now he’s an analyst for the Golf Channel.

CHAMBLEE: There was going to be a train wreck at some point.

And yet, on the tournament’s final day, on the final hole, stood a man who had tamed the savage course.

Peter ALLISS: [From BBC coverage of the 1999 British Open] The golfing gods are with the young man at this moment, and it’ll be interesting to see what he does now.

This man, with one hole to play, held a three-stroke lead. So obvious was his impending victory that his name had already been engraved on the Open’s iconic trophy, the Claret Jug. It read: Jean Van de Velde.

CHAMBLEE: He was a very handsome, debonair Frenchman, and he had a gorgeous golf swing.

Van de Velde was ranked just 152nd in the world.

CHAMBLEE: He was not a good driver of the ball. He didn’t drive it long, and he drove it crooked. Although, that week, for whatever reason, he found another gear that week, he did drive it long

History wasn’t necessarily in Van de Velde’s favor:

CHAMBLEE: He would have been the first Frenchman in over 100 years to have won the Open Championship. And there was a sense that Frenchmen don’t win majors. Frenchmen paint beautiful paintings and they write epic books about democracy and revenge. They don’t win the Open Championship.

But standing on the final tee with a three-stroke lead? If you are a professional golfer, you will not lose that tournament. How ludicrous would that be? Imagine a professional chef; she’s about to make an omelet. She goes to crack an egg on the side of the bowl — but instead, she somehow misses the bowl entirely and smashes the egg all over her face. That’s how ludicrous it would be to lose a golf tournament standing on the last tee with a three-shot lead. It would require a grotesque combination of decisions and actions. There is a word for this. It is such a horrific word that some people don’t even like to say it aloud. We’re not one of those people.

Sian BEILOCK: There’s lots of different ways people can choke.

Steve JARDING: The choke is an amazing thing, because it really does destroy careers.

BEILOCK: It doesn’t have to be the Olympic Games. It can be when you’re parallel parking, and people around you are watching, right?

Today on Freakonomics Radio: when we choke, why we choke — and maybe, just maybe, how not to.

*      *      *

If we’re going to talk about choking, we probably need to bring in some psychologists.

Anders ERICSSON: I’m Anders Ericsson and I’m a professor of psychology at Florida State University here in Tallahassee, Florida.

Anders Ericsson, pioneer of the “deliberate practice” movement and the 10,000-hours idea, has been studying expert performers for years.

ERICSSON: [From “How to Become Great at Just About Anything”] Ballet dancers, gymnasts, and all sorts of athletes; we’ve looked at chess experts, surgeons, doctors, teachers, musicians, taxi drivers, recreational activities like golf, and even, there’s some research on scientists.

DUBNER: Define choking for me as you see it?

ERICSSON: Well, choking, to me, is actually somebody who cramps up and in some ways becomes unable to really act appropriately in a situation, or acts in a very decreased performance.

BEILOCK: I define choking as worse performance than you’d expect from an individual, given that there is high pressure or stakes associated with the situation.

And that’s Sian Beilock.

BEILOCK: I’m a cognitive scientist, and I am president of Barnard College at Columbia University.

Before coming to Barnard, Beilock ran the Human Performance Lab at the University of Chicago. She also wrote a book called Choke.

DUBNER: So I’m curious to know if you can sort of rank the different domains that people engage in regularly, and where we’re most likely to choke.

BEILOCK: I really think that any situation where there’s expectations for success can cause choking, and it doesn’t have to be the Olympic Games. It can be when you’re parallel parking, and people around you are watching, right? Or if you’re in an elevator and you’re trying to figure out whether you’re going to say something to the person next to you. We talk about these epic moments of choking, but it’s a desire to perform at our best, and situations in which we’re evaluated happen constantly.

DUBNER: Give me a little bit on the characteristics of those who are more and less prone to choke. What about high I.Q. versus low I.Q.?

BEILOCK: In my research and in others’, we’ve shown perhaps counterintuitively that individuals who have the most ability to focus, the most working memory, the most fluid intelligence, are actually more prone to perform poorly under stress. And the idea is that if you normally devote lots of cognitive resources to what you’re doing and being in a pressure-filled situation robs you of those resources, you can’t perform as well.

DUBNER: You’ve just described all the reasons why I’m not very good at playing golf under pressure. And what about, say, gender? Male versus female, more or less likely to choke?

BEILOCK: I think it’s really dependent on the situation. So, we know that when women are aware of stereotypes that they shouldn’t perform well — maybe they’re aware of stereotypes that men are better at math, even though I think these stereotypes are quite unfounded — just being aware of that can affect how they perform. And it can be because you’re anxious about math, and so you can’t calculate the tip on the dinner bill as your smart friends look on, or it could be because you’re a girl in a room full of men, trying to think and compute math problems, and you’re aware that there’s ideas out there that you shouldn’t be as good at what you’re doing.

DUBNER: And then let me just ask you one more kind of summary about surroundings. So, I know that you write — I kind of loved this, but also felt a little creeped out, no offense — that your parents would often travel great distances to see you present, like at an academic seminar. And by great distances, we’re talking Australia!

BEILOCK: Yeah.

DUBNER: Your dad flew to Australia to see you give a talk at a seminar? Is that true?

BEILOCK: Yeah, it’s true. And it’s still true in my current role. My mother shows up at lots of events, and I’ve actually instructed my assistant to not give out my calendar without permission to her. It’s very supportive, but also stress-inducing.

DUBNER: So, on that note, talk about choking in what you might call a friendly environment versus a hostile environment.

BEILOCK: There’s research showing that when you have friendly faces in front of you, people who are supportive — although that could feel nice, it actually creates pressure-filled situations. You often start thinking of yourself as they might. And so when my mother is in the room, I sometimes think of myself as a young girl. And you also are quite self-conscious.

In a recent episode about the World Cup, we looked at the research into why there’s such a strong home-field advantage in most sports. The most plausible explanation is that referees are subconsciously influenced by the home crowd, and may make one or two key calls in the home team’s favor. The research also showed that, on balance, athletes themselves do not perform better in front of a home crowd. And, in fact, when Sian Beilock tells us that “friendly faces” may actually “create pressure-filled situations,” you have to wonder if, on some dimensions, they might perform even worse.

Alex KRUMER: My main research interests are behavioral economics, contest theory, and sports economics.

That’s Alex Krumer. He’s an economist at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. He recently co-authored a paper called “Choking Under Pressure in Front of a Supportive Audience: Evidence from Professional Biathlon.” That’s the sport combining cross-country skiing with precision rifle shooting. Krumer analyzed the performance of more than 400 biathletes, male and female, over 15 years of competition, including World Championships and the Olympics. How did they do at home versus abroad? Let’s look first at the skiing portion:

KRUMER: So, we find that home biathletes, they ski faster at home, about two seconds faster.

Okay, so maybe all those home cheers do spur the athletes to ski faster. How about the shooting?

KRUMER: Both men and women missed more shots when competing in their home country compared to competing abroad.

Men missed, on average, 0.15 more shots at home than abroad. Women — a bit more: 0.2 shots.

KRUMER: One may say that this is not too much, but it’s quite a large effect if we take into account that the average time it takes to ski a penalty loop is about 25 seconds.

That’s right: for every missed shot, you have to ski a small penalty loop.

KRUMER: This means that when competing at home, a biathlete loses on average four to six seconds. And to put this number into perspective, in the Olympic Games in Sochi, the home biathlete athlete Anton Shipulin — which, by the way, I really love his performance — he was only 0.7 seconds away from a bronze medal after missing one shot.

But what if skiing faster is what causes you to miss more shots?

KRUMER: One may assume that since they ski faster they have higher heart rate, and therefore they miss more. But the evidence on the association between heart rate and shooting performance is mixed.

Okay, so that doesn’t seem to explain the worse shooting at home. Is there maybe another explanation?

KRUMER: The second explanation is that usually they perform the shooting task in a very automatic manner. They don’t look around, they don’t care about anything. But probably when you perform at home, something disturbs you.

Krumer tells us that biathletes usually “perform the shooting in a very automatic manner.” That sounds like it might be relevant to our choking discussion. So what, exactly, does that mean? Back to the psychologist Sian Beilock:

BEILOCK: We know that sometimes people don’t perform up to their potential, precisely when they want to the most. And sometimes that happens because people pay too much attention to the details of what they’re doing, details that should be left on autopilot.

At the Human Performance Lab, Beilock and her colleagues did an experiment with expert golfers and novices.

BEILOCK: So we set up a putting green in our lab. And when we tried to ask experts for their memories of how they’d taken a putt, they couldn’t tell us so much about it. The novices, the people who were just learning, could tell us way more. And we thought, “Wow, this might be an indication that these high-level golfers aren’t paying so much attention to what they’re doing. And so one of the reasons that they might perform poorly under stress is when they start paying attention.”

DUBNER: The way you’ve just put that would not be that surprising to anyone who follows let’s say golf per se, right?

BEILOCK: It is true that sometimes athletes have these these moments of feelings of being in the zone. But I think we often don’t think about this idea that paying too much attention could actually be counterproductive. Like, if your coach is yelling, “Concentrate!” all the time. And so being able to actually show that when you’re at this high level you’re not paying attention to the details, and one of the reasons you mess up is because you start paying attention to those details, allowed us to start asking questions about how we prevent you from paying attention to details.

ERICSSON: What is it that people actually are thinking about when they’re doing putting?

Anders Ericsson also did putting experiments in his lab, at Florida State, with somewhat different results.

ERICSSON: So, we actually asked our participants to think out loud, and recruited skilled and less-skilled individuals. And what we found was that the skilled individuals, they were actually verbalizing more about thoughts and, basically, factors that they were taking into account, in order to actually decide how they were going to putt the putt. So the argument is that, if you’re really skilled, you’re actually generating a rich description here of the situation. So, you’re trying to take into account here how, basically, the ball will roll and where you need to aim in order to have the appropriate ball path.

DUBNER: I know that some psychologists argue that what separates the better performers, the top-tier performers, from the rest of us, is some form of automaticity, right? That you’re going into some free-flowing state that’s dependent on all your talent and experience, et cetera, but you’re not actually engaging in it cognitively. You’re saying that’s not what you found.

ERICSSON: What we’re finding is that experts are able to make adjustments when they’re performing. So if you’re a musician and the acoustics in a given performance environment is different, you can actually make adjustments, in the same way that a soccer player, when the situation changes, they can actually make adjustments appropriate to that situation, and I think that’s what we’re finding here, is that the really elite people, those who are really able to keep improving, are the ones who actually have a very refined description of the situation and are increasing their control over what they’re doing, as opposed to allowing it just to happen.

DUBNER: So let me ask you this, Anders: To what degree do you believe that choking is the factor, or a main factor, that actually separates an absolute top-tier performer from someone who’s talented but doesn’t reach the top tier? In other words, is the expert — is the professional — the very good performer who has learned to not choke?

ERICSSON: My experience is that choking is quite rare by those individuals that we study, who are consistently excelling. And it seems to be almost part of being an expert is that you deal with the kind of situations that would be experienced as very high-pressure for other people.

So that’s an interesting continuum: high-pressure performances can lead to choking, but expert performers — who compete under pressure all the time — tend to not choke. Of course, it does happen.

Jeremy ABBOTT: For me, it was terrifying.

Jeremy Abbott was one of the best figure skaters in the world. He won the U.S. men’s championship four times, and went to the Olympics in 2010 and 2014. Things didn’t go so well at the Olympics:

Scott HAMILTON: [From NBC Olympics coverage] Opening with a quad toe right here. Oh. Short of rotation, could not pull that landing together. Hard fall there.

Sandra BEZIC: This is a disastrous performance.

ABBOTT: It was unlike any other situation I’d ever been in. All of my practice and all of my preparation, once I got to the Games, everything leading up to that moment, both Olympics, in Vancouver and in Sochi, I was really excited, I could see the rings. And the moment I went out in Vancouver, and in Sochi, every insecurity that I had about myself and about my skating was just magnified by a million. And I was just so focused on not wanting to make a mistake — I was in the wrong mindset.

Both times, Abbott failed to medal in the individual events. He retired from competitive skating in 2016, and he now coaches in Detroit. He uses his own experience to help the next generation.

ABBOTT: I should have been focusing less on outcome and less on performance and more on the process and getting my job done, and accomplishing what I do every single day in training, and really taking all of that experience and all of that work and putting it to use, rather than focusing on, “What if that, what if this,” anything could happen. But whenever I skated my best, it was never focusing on a placement or a point total or pleasing somebody else. It was always just, “Okay, I’m here, and I’m going to do a job.” And that was when I always skated my best.

BEILOCK: It’s precisely those times when you do start thinking too much that you can flub a performance.

Sian Beilock again.

BEILOCK: And so any situation that causes you to attend in ways that you might not normally can mess you up.

DUBNER: So, can I just say, I love our species. I think we’re kind of awesome. I mean we have some flaws, and so on, but doesn’t it seem like a weird counterbalance that we tend to choke most in the circumstances, as you’ve been telling us, that matter the most to us? Doesn’t that just seem like a design flaw?

BEILOCK: It is interesting. I guess you could say that maybe we haven’t adapted to those situations yet. We’ve certainly been in social situations for a long time, but our level of self-consciousness and meta-cognitive ability — the ability to know what we and others are thinking — is something that’s probably fairly recent, evolutionarily-wise.

So we should probably take a look at how we think differently, and perform differently, as the stakes rise.

*      *      *

When psychologists think about choking under pressure, they consider a variety of thought processes that may be subtle and hard to measure. Economists look at choking a bit differently.

Uri GNEEZY: Say that you would have paid me a million dollars if I’ll give the best interview of the week.

Uri Gneezy is an economist at the University of California, San Diego.

GNEEZY: That would have made me very nervous. That would have made me put more effort into this. When we look at incentives in economics, we think about two ways in which it’s going to affect us. The first is that if I’ll pay you more, you’ll put more effort in the task. And the second assumption is that more effort will lead to better performance. That’s not necessarily true. And that’s the part of choking. It might be that I can push you so much to try so hard that it will actually backfire, and you’ll perform worse.

Gneezy co-authored one of the foundational economics papers on choking. It’s called “Large Stakes and Big Mistakes.” He and his colleagues ran experiments in a variety of places, including India:

GNEEZY: The reason we wanted to go to India is that over there, our money can go a long way. So we went to some villages in India in which the daily wage was so low that we could offer them up to six months of salary in our experiment if they did perfectly well.

Each participant completed a series of tasks. Some were creative:

GNEEZY: So, the creative one was, for example, to pack pieces of metal into a box in an efficient way.

Some tasks were cognitive:

GNEEZY: A memory game in which I would read up numbers and you listen to me and then at some point say “Stop,” and then you’ll have to recall the last three numbers that I mentioned.

And some tasks were athletic.

GNEEZY: Throwing dart-like balls, so balls on a target, and things like that.

The payout for successful completion of the task was variable. In some cases, you’d get 10 cents; in others, $1; and in others, $10.

GNEEZY: And $10 was about what they made in a month over there. I hope that you agree with me that six months of pay is a lot of money that would make you work much harder, right? And the question was, are you going to be better actually when you work harder?

As Gneezy noted earlier, it’s a standard assumption in labor economics that higher pay leads to more effort, and that more effort leads to better performance, or at least higher productivity. What happened in this case, when the stakes were raised all the way to $10?

GNEEZY: So, the findings were striking. You see reduction in success rates across the board. All six games that we played resulted in lower success rate when the incentives were really high.

For the three-digit memory game, roughly 40 percent of the participants succeeded under low incentives; under high incentives, the success rate was just 20 percent. For the dart-ball game, the success rate under low incentives was 10 percent; and around 7 percent under high incentives. For the metal packing game? Under low incentives, 25 percent of the participants succeeded; under high incentives, nobody succeeded. Or, put another way, at least 25 percent of them choked.

GNEEZY: Actually, we were a bit surprised by this experiment because we included tasks in which we expected that effort will increase performance.

But if you think about it, you can see why the researchers maybe shouldn’t have been so surprised. In these experiments, “increased effort” isn’t simply a matter of putting in more time, the way you might with an assignment at work or a project at school. It was trying to execute the same task with and without pressure. So Gneezy and his colleagues wanted to learn more about what sort of tasks make us succumb to pressure. They ran some more experiments at M.I.T., using students as their research subjects. Some experiments involved simple, manual tasks — like punching alternating keyboard keys as fast as possible:

GNEEZY: It’s really something that if you do it for long enough it’s boring, so if I’ll pay you more, you’ll try maybe harder, and we believe that more effort will actually increase your performance.

Other tasks were more cognitive — like adding numbers in matrices.

GNEEZY: When you think about cognitive tasks, you probably reach your optimal behavior, your best, very fast. And now if I’m really making it high incentives, you might actually start being distracted.

Once again, there were low- and high-incentive versions of each task. Since a dollar doesn’t go as far in Massachusetts as it does in India, the rewards here were: up to $30 for the low-incentive experiments and up to $300 for the high.

GNEEZY: So, what we found is that for the key-pressing task, when you increase the incentives from up to $30 to up to $300, they switch from about 40 percent succeeding to 80 percent succeeding. On the other end, when you have to add up numbers, the more cognitive one, we see a sharp decrease from 65 percent to 40 percent. So when you actually have to put some cognitive effort into this, getting the incentives to be ridiculously high could actually be a bad idea.

This would seem to be pretty good evidence that when activities involve some thinking, we’re more susceptible to choking. Or, as you’ve probably heard from a lot of people over the years — coaches and teachers and counselors of all sorts — you are capable of doing some amazing things if you can only get your brain out of the way. But that’s obviously harder than it sounds. So how can you do that? How can you prepare yourself to not crumble under the very circumstances that matter most?

Steve JARDING: The choke is an amazing thing in politics, because it really does destroy careers.

Steve Jarding teaches political communication at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He coaches students how to perform well in high-stakes public forums — like a presidential debate.

JARDING: We saw with Rick Perry, and we always tell people in a debate, an interview, don’t say, “Here’s five things I would do,” or, “Here’s seven things that I would do,” because you put too much pressure on the brain. The minute you say it, literally, the second those words leave your mouth, you’re thinking, “Oh my god, what in the hell are the five?” And in that debate, if you remember, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, one of the front-runners for his party, stands up in the debate, says:

Rick PERRY: It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, Education, and the uhhhh… What’s the third one there, let’s see… The third one I can’t. Sorry. Oops.

JARDING: And he’d have been better off, after he couldn’t remember the third, to say, “Well, listen, there’s scores of agencies I would cut. So whether there’s three or 13, you know me, I’m going to go in, I’m going to take a knife to that damn budget, because it’s too over-bloated.” He probably saves his career.

The third agency Perry wanted to cut, he later said, was the Department of Energy. In the kind of twist that can happen only in Washington, Rick Perry now runs the Department of Energy. So, um … yeah. Uri Gneezy at U.C.-San Diego says that in some instances, choking now can lead to more success later.

GNEEZY: So, actually, if I choke once, the penalty could be so high, I would feel so bad about myself that maybe in the future I’ll be much more prepared, which might actually help in performing under pressure.

ERICSSON: You need to prepare for the complexities of the situations that you are going to encounter in the real world.

Anders Ericsson again:

ERICSSON: So if they made a mistake the first time, now this second time, they can avoid that same mistake.

DUBNER: What you’re describing to me sounds an awful lot like deliberate practice, then, yes?

ERICSSON: Well, I think you’re completely right, because that’s exactly what we’re hoping, is to take the real-world situation and then actually find some version of it that you would have more control over, so you can actually practice and get immediate feedback, make revisions, and then apply that same acquired skill in the real-world situation.

BEILOCK: How do we get people to focus on aspects of their performance that are going to be beneficial for success, especially in those situations that are most problematic?

Sian Beilock again, going back to her golf experiments.

BEILOCK: So we investigated whether going quicker, for example, might help eliminate poor performance under pressure, or having one key swing thought that encapsulates your entire stroke might be better. And we showed that some of that was successful. And it leads to the opposite idea, that if you really want to mess your buddy up on the back nine, you just say, “Hey that was a great shot. What were you doing with your elbow?”

DUBNER: Great, so you’re helping us make people choke more. But what else can you tell us about — in this domain at least — learning to choke less?

BEILOCK: We also showed that getting used to this type of hyper-attention to detail that sometimes comes with performance can be helpful. So, really inoculating yourself against the high-pressure situations. You see this with students who practice taking timed tests. You see this with military pilots, and firefighters, and people who practice under some of the types of conditions they’re going to perform under. And you even see this if you walk by a college football stadium Friday afternoon — the music blaring, getting the players used to what it’s going to feel like in that big stadium. And this is true in really big important situations, but it’s also true in those little things we do every day. So, if you’re going to give a toast at a wedding, practicing doing it while people are watching you. And if no one is willing to watch you, videotape yourself — anything that gets you used to the kinds of all eyes on you.

DUBNER: Okay, so put yourself in realistic and stressful practice situations. What else?

BEILOCK: We know, on the athletic field, invoking ways to take your mind off the step-by-step of what you’re doing in the moment, especially on those easier performances. So whether it’s singing a song, or thinking about your pinky toe, or thinking about where you want the ball to land rather than how it’s going to get there.

DUBNER: So, it sounds like if you would summarize all of those activities under one umbrella, it might be like distracting your mind or streamlining it. How do you think about that?

BEILOCK: I’d say controlling what you’re focusing on.

DUBNER: Okay, so controlling what you’re focusing on; realistic practice situations; what else?

BEILOCK: Rethinking how you’re feeling. So, we know that when people remind themselves that sweaty palms and beating heart aren’t a sign they’re going to fail, but a sign that they’re awake and ready to go, and their body is shunting important nutrients to their mind, that can be really effective.

DUBNER: Now, is that a charade, or is that real? I mean, if my palms are sweaty, isn’t that an indication that I am anxious, and that if I just tell myself, “Well it’s not really anxiety, it’s really my body shunting nutrients,” Is that a self-lie that I profit from, or is that realistically a counter-truth?

BEILOCK: First of all I will just say that I like placebo effects, and I have no problem with that. But I think it’s a real truth, because if your heart wasn’t beating, to some extent, you’d be dead, right? And those sweaty palms can be an indication that you’re alert, and aroused, and ready to go. And arousal doesn’t have to be a bad thing, right? It’s bad when we start thinking it’s bad, and then we just start changing our performance.

DUBNER: I love how your counterfactual is always, “Or, you could be dead.” So that is a very useful. I mean, that’s inspiring. Like, I don’t want that.

BEILOCK: Yeah. It’s a good opposition.

DUBNER: It’s a great opposition, yeah. No, I’m serious, I totally like it. Because another piece of advice I’ve always heard is like, “Envision the worst outcome, right, and then think about how this will not be anywhere near as bad as that.” Like if I’m about to hit a high-stakes golf shot, I think, “Well what if instead, like, the club head comes off the club in the backswing and kills my friend?”

BEILOCK: Yeah, that’s way worse!

DUBNER: That’s way worse! So anything from there is like gravy.

BEILOCK: Yeah, and we’ve actually shown that getting people to just jot down their thoughts and worries can be beneficial, just sort of downloading them from mind when they feel stressed out. And one of the things that that does is get you to realize maybe it’s not such a big deal, right? What you’re doing is not as big of a deal as your friend getting hit with the club and dying.

DUBNER: Again, always comes back to dying. What about other means of directing the mind, whether meditation, perhaps?

BEILOCK: There’s lots of research showing that meditative practices can help change how you focus, and your ability to focus on what you want, and get rid of what you don’t. That’s true with visualizing positive performance outcomes ahead of time, and really focusing on why you should succeed. What are the factors that you’ve practiced well? You’ve got this. You’ve had situations like this in the past and they’ve gone really well.

But then there are situations that you haven’t had in the past. Situations that are way bigger, way more pressurized, than anything you could have prepared for …

CHAMBLEE: On the eve of that championship, Jean Van de Velde was ranked 152nd in the world, and people that are 152nd in the world don’t win major championships.

Brandel Chamblee again, talking about the unlikely but apparently inevitable British Open victory of Jean van de Velde.

ALLISS: The golfing gods are with him. Some golfing god is with the young man at this moment, and it’ll be interesting again to see what he does now.

Remember, Van de Velde’s name had already been engraved on the trophy. All he had to do was score a double-bogey six or better on the par-4 18th hole at Carnoustie.

CHAMBLEE: But it was a devastatingly hard hole, no question about it. There is O.B. to the left, a burn down the right, a bunker out there to the right.

“O.B.” is “out of bounds.” A burn is a Scottish term for a creek.

CHAMBLEE: What made this so unbelievable to watch is that it was a combination of what looked to be good breaks that were actually horrible breaks.

Rather than playing his tee shot safe with an iron, Van de Velde stuck with what he’d done all week and he hit driver. He pushed his drive way, way right.

ALLISS: Oh, you lucky little rascal. He’s pushed that away and missed the water, he’s almost, well he’s right in front of the 17th tee.

CHAMBLEE: That’s a great break. If it had gone in the burn, he would have done the math and thought, “Can’t go for it. There’s no way I can go for this, because I can lay up three, hit on four, two-putt six. I’m an Open champion.” So now he pulls a two iron out, so he’s going to be safe going to the right.

ALLISS: Well, I don’t believe this. Well. What is going on here?

CHAMBLEE: So it hits the stands — really hit a pole — then it’s going to go in the burn.

ALLIS: Let’s have a look where he is. He’s still short of the burn, I think really if anybody needs an advisor, he does at this moment.

CHAMBLEE: But it doesn’t go in the burn, it hits the bricks — the rocks — and it bounces over the burn. Great break.

DUBNER: Lying just two in the hay. Right? So not so bad.

CHAMBLEE: Just two, and he’s 30 yards away. So, two great breaks. He goes down there with renewed hope. All he’s got to do is get this wedge out. But again, this is where I would imagine the real choking started, because now, he’s in a really difficult situation. And that’s where he hit a shot that was really just hard to describe. I mean, it’s like he stopped swinging halfway down.

ALLISS: What are you doing? What on earth are you doing? Would somebody kindly go and stop him. Give him a large brandy and mop him down.

CHAMBLEE: And the ball went right in the burn. And then it became surreal, and he thinks he can play it.

ALLISS: He’s gone gaga, because this is quite — I’ve never seen anything like it before, and to attempt to hit the ball out of there is pure madness.

CHAMBLEE: So here he is, pants up, and he decides he can’t play it. So now he gets to go back and drop it.

DUBNER: First good decision he’s made on the hole, maybe.

CHAMBLEE: That’s right. But the lie forced him to make a good decision. And here’s how you get disasters. It’s never just one thing — it’s always a confluence of two or three or four things that were almost unprecedented. So now he drops the ball, taking the penalty shot. So he’s — he’s three in, four out, hitting five. Five is in the bunker.

ALLISS: He hasn’t hit it hard enough. He played a similar shot to the one he plopped into the burn.

CHAMBLEE: Now he’s got an easy bunker shot. Bunker shots are not difficult for professional golfers. He gets it out to six feet. Now, here’s the thing to remember, is that he makes that putt —

ALLISS: Please give him one good putt. Please. Well, if you believe it.

CHAMBLEE: — and I am almost certain that when he made that putt, he thought he had won.

DUBNER: Oh, that’s why he gives the fist pump. Cause he looked ecstatic, yeah?

CHAMBLEE: I think he thought he had won, because I think in the confusion, he lost count. I’ve done it before. He lost count. Because he reacted as if he had won the championship.

DUBNER: And then he looks around, like, “Why is everybody not cheering, crazily, for me?”

CHAMBLEE: That’s right. That’s right.

ALLIS: His golfing brain stopped about 10 minutes ago, I think.

But Van de Velde hadn’t won. He made a triple-bogey seven, which put him in a three-man playoff for the Open Championship. He lost the playoff, to Paul Lawrie. Jean van de Velde never did win a major championship. We called up Van de Velde ourselves recently to check in with him.

Jean VAN DE VELDE: Yes, Stephen, I can hear you. Hello.

Unfortunately, the connection was very poor, so the tape isn’t really worth playing. You can read the transcript here if you’d like. Anyway, we had a nice chat about his family, his continuing involvement with golf — Van de Velde was instrumental in bringing the Ryder Cup to France this fall — and, of course, that terrible 18th hole at Carnoustie in 1999. I asked if it was difficult to talk about it. “It’s never been difficult,” he said. “Just after not winning the Open, it was painful … but you’re a professional athlete.” I asked what it felt like, standing on the 72nd tee with a three-shot lead. “I stood there pretty confident, to be honest,” he said. “I wasn’t overly emotional, or emotional at all. … My nerves were holding pretty okay.” I asked Van de Velde if during the long and difficult adventure on the 18th hole, he had indeed lost track of his score and the lead. Definitely not, he said. Lying five in the bunker, he told me, “I knew that I needed to hole it to win the tournament.” Then I asked him this:

DUBNER: You became famous for not having won the Open. Your 72nd hole has been called the worst choke in golfing history. Do you think that’s true or fair?

VAN DE VELDE: I think we need to ask the definition of choke.

“I think I had two days to choke,” he said. “So a choke? You know, I wouldn’t call that a choke, without a doubt. I would probably use a different word, but certainly not that one.” Earlier I’d asked Brandel Chamblee how Van de Velde had handled the meltdown.

CHAMBLEE: His remarks afterwards were as measured and respectful and appropriate and magnanimous as anybody I’ve ever heard that had gone through something so traumatic. And I gained a great deal of respect for him, immediately.

A lot of other people gained respect for him too. When I asked Van de Velde himself how that one hole changed his life, he said: “You know … it’s very easy to win with grace; it’s a lot harder to lose with it. And without patronizing anybody or blowing my own trumpet, I would say that … the way that I see life, and the way that I’ve accepted what happened … I believe that’s what people like…

VAN DE VELDE: It’s in my nature to see it the way that I see it and that’s the end of that.

I wish Jean Van de Velde were still playing competitive golf only so I could root for him to win. Every week. I agree that losing with grace is not easy; and I agree he accomplished that. And, as Brandel Chamblee points out, the loss did come with some consolation points:

CHAMBLEE: Think about this, now: that adage that nobody remembers who finished second. Well, in this particular instance, hardly anybody remembers who won.

Again, you can read the transcript of the Jean Van de Velde interview here. We’ve also posted, on Stitcher Premium, a bonus episode — our full interview with Brandel Chamblee. Use the promo code “FREAKONOMICS” to get one month of Stitcher Premium free.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Harry Huggins. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Greg Rosalsky, Greg Rippin, and Andy Meisenheimer. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Jeremy Abbott, U.S. Olympic figure skater.

Sian Beilock, cognitive scientist and president of Barnard College at Columbia University.

Brandel Chamblee, Golf Channel analyst and former P.G.A. Tour player.

Anders Ericsson, professor of psychology at Florida State University.

Uri Gneezy, economist at the University of California, San Diego.

Steve Jarding, professor of political communication at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Alex Krumer, economist at the University of St. Gallen.

Jean Van de Velde, former P.G.A. Tour player.

RESOURCES

“Choking Under Pressure in Front of a Supportive Audience: Evidence from Professional Biathlon,” by Alex Krumer and Ken Harb-Wu (University of St. Gallen, November 2017).

“Large Stakes and Big Mistakes,” by Dan Ariely, Uri Gneezy, George Loewenstein, and Nina Mazar (Review of Economic Studies, July 2008).

Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, by Sian Beilock (2011).

“Cognitive Mediation of Putting: Use of a Think-Aloud Measure and Implications for Studies of Golf-Putting in the Laboratory,” by Güler Arsal, David Eccles, and Anders Ericsson (Psychology of Sport and Exercise, November 2016).

EXTRAS

“How to Become Great at Just About Anything,” Freakonomics Radio (April 27, 2016).

Full transcript of Stephen J. Dubner’s interview with Jean Van de Velde.

Listen to the full interview with Brandel Chamblee on Stitcher Premium. Use the code “FREAKONOMICS” to get one month free.

The post Why We Choke Under Pressure (and How Not To) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/choking/

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Wests life and music have combined into an ongoing piece of performance art one that appears unsustainable at this pitch

In an era when the likes of Beyoncé can release perfectly formed records without warning, the saga of Kanye Wests seventh album has been comically messy. He first announced it a year ago, under the name So Help Me God, but postponed its release by several months while renaming it Swish, Waves and, finally, The Life of Pablo.

In the weeks prior to its grandiloquent live-streamed launch at Madison Square Garden on Thursday an album playback featuring celebrity guests and an army of black models debuting Wests latest Yeezy fashion line he posted a series of perplexingly self-destructive tweets on topics including his ex-girlfriend Amber Rose and Bill Cosby. Even for a man who clearly subscribes to Oscar Wildes dictum, There is only thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about, it was a bizarre display.

West, 38, is arguably the most important pop artist of his era and certainly the most compelling, for good or ill. He speaks, and indeed acts, in superlatives. In recent years he has described himself, not always entirely seriously, as the greatest living rock star on the planet, the new Steve Jobs, a potential US president and, simply, the nucleus. Inevitably, he inspires extreme reactions.

When he was booked for last years Glastonbury festival, more than 130,000 people signed a petition calling for an insult to music fans all over the world to be dropped. The vehemence of such attacks on an apologetically outspoken black man doubtless had a racist dimension but that alone does not explain why the rapper is such a uniquely polarising figure.

West was brought up to achieve great things. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, but raised in Chicago by his mother, Donda, an academic, he was given the name Kanye meaning only one Omari wise man and she taught him above all to love himself. In her memoir Raising Kanye, Donda wrote that West inherited from his father Ray, a former member of the Black Panther party, little patience for what he thinks is unjust. Wests kindergarten teacher said to Donda: Kanye certainly doesnt have any problem with self-esteem, does he?

That dude was focused since he was a shorty because he knew what he wanted to do and he had a mother who supported the shit out of him, his friend and fellow rapper GLC once told Complex magazine.

Kanye West in 2004. Photograph: Frank Micelotta/Getty Images

After enrolling at art college in 1997, West dropped out to pursue production work for the likes of Jay Z, with a signature sound based on accelerated soul samples, and then fought doggedly to be taken seriously as a rapper.

I realised that he was going to make it happen and he didnt mind being an asshole, Damon Dash, Jay Zs partner in Roc-A-Fella Records, told Complex. If you dont mind being an asshole, youre not going to lose. He wasnt scared, he had gall. A decade later, West told the New York Times: I knew I was going to make it this far; I knew that this was going to happen.

In October 2002, West was involved in a car crash that shattered his jaw and changed his life. He was convinced that God had saved his life and that he needed to write more profound lyrics. He described this epiphany in his 2003 single Through the Wire: a superheros origin story in which he emerges from a life-threatening accident stronger than ever. I knew I was dealing with a different human being after the accident, his managerGee Roberson told Complex. From that day forth, it was game on.

Unlike his mentor Jay Z, the middle-class West couldnt draw on a violent, hardscrabble youth for credibility so he had to create his own drama, trumpeting his talent and ambition to a degree that was unusual even by hip-hops self-aggrandising standards.

Im the closest that hip-hop is getting to God, he told journalists at an album playback in 2005. Talking to the Guardian afterwards, he described his florid braggadocio as both a form of self-motivation and a theatrical performance. Its like Im walking on this tightrope. Its like, damn, what if he falls? And if I do make it, its like, damn, he made it! But either way youre saying damn. Everybody else is just walking on the ground.

West backed up his rhetoric by constantly redefining what hip-hop could be. The College Dropout (2004) bridged the gulf between mainstream rappers and socially conscious underground MCs. The lavish Late Registration (2005) was co-produced by thefilm score composer Jon Brion. The Daft Punk-sampling, Nietzsche-quoting hit Stronger, from Graduation (2007), began hip-hops lucrative liaison with EDM. Most of its current stars, including Drake and Kendrick Lamar, walked through doors that West opened.

West is a tireless enthusiast with constantly expanding tastes and an ear for whats next. He has been adept at choosing collaborators, from big names such as Rihanna and Daft Punk to up-and-comers such as Arca and Kid Cudi, and taking inspiration from fashion, cinema, architecture and visual art. He is a famous perfectionist who claimed to have mixed his single Stronger 75 times before he was satisfied.

Logic would seemingly state that an album with so many people working on it would sound disjointed, but what Kanye manages to do is get the best out of everyone working towards one sound, the producer Evian Christ told Pitchfork in 2013. You cant really overstate how difficult it is to do that.

West is also an unpredictable lyricist who is equally capable of self-aware jokes, crass, misogynist punchlines and eloquent examinations of race and class. Early in his career, he spoke out against homophobia in hip-hop and blurted out George Bush doesnt care about black people during a telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina, although he has only sporadically engaged with politics since. He is often at his best when he is being inappropriate. (Five years later, Bush called the incident the all-time low of his presidency.)

Wests behaviour changed dramatically after Donda Wests death in November 2007, from heart disease. He rarely talks about the loss but last year told Q that he blamed himself: If I had never moved to LA shed be alive. West became a more haunted and guarded figure, returning to music with 808s & Heartbreak (2008), a brave, introspective album that featured more Auto-Tuned singing than rapping and paved the way for Drake and The Weeknd.

Kanye West takes the microphone from Taylor Swift as she accepts her award during the MTV VMAs in 2009. Photograph: Jason DeCrow/Associated Press

The loss of his mother invited sympathy but the next turning point in Wests life inspired fury and derision. In 2009, he interrupted Taylor Swifts acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, bringing to the boil a long-simmering backlash. (West ungallantly references the incident on his new song Famous.) He retreated to his bunker if Hawaii can be called a bunker and made his decadent epic My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) with a legion of collaborators including Nicki Minaj, Bon Iver and Elton John. He later described it as a long backhanded apology.

In recent years, Wests ambition has become both grander and more diffuse. During interviews and concerts to promote Yeezus (2013), an audaciously abrasive electro-punk primal scream that he called a protest to music, he delivered long, furious monologues about his struggle to break into the fashion industry.

He increasingly seems more interested in clothes than in music Right now, over 70% of my focus is on apparel, he told Paper magazine and much more besides. He has compared himself to such world-changing figures as Picasso and Walt Disney, befriended the tech stargazer Elon Musk, and talked about his ambition to inspire an army of risk-taking cultural soldiers. You can see the growth from Im gonna be this great artist to I wanna do something that ignites a fire in peoples souls, he told Q.

However much credit West gets, it is never enough. In a 2013 interview he compared his critics to the eight-grade basketball coach who would not include him in the team even though he hit every shot. The next year, he made the team. West is driven by the desire to prove his doubters wrong, and fired up by his previous ability to do so.

While most high-profile artists accept that they cannot please everybody, West craves approval from establishment institutions that he appears to hate, from the Grammy awards to European fashion houses, as a point of principle. I dont care about the Grammys, he told the New York Times. I just would like for the statistics to be more accurate.

It is unclear what will happen when West can no longer hit every shot. The singles he released last year, including collaborations with Paul McCartney, were coolly received. His Glastonbury performance promised to be either a triumph or a disaster but, most reviewers agreed, fell somewhere in-between. Pitchforks Jayson Greene wrote: He is responsible for the current zeitgeist, but listening to his slightly confused new material, you get the distinct sense that hes struggling to find his current footing in it.

Reading Wests recent tweets, it is impossible to work out exactly what he is trying to achieve. He is clearly a more volatile and erratic character than he used to be. Marriage and fatherhood are often stabilising influences but marrying Kim Kardashian in 2014 has pitched West into a tabloid world with an endless appetite for gossip. It is unlikely that he could retreat from the spotlight, as he did in 2009, even if he wanted to.

Sorry, your browser is unable to play this video.

Kanye West releases album and fashion collection at Madison Square Garden

His life and music have combined into an ongoing piece of performance art which is unsustainable at this pitch. No artist can remain the nucleus of pop culture indefinitely. One day, this extraordinarily successful figure will face the new challenge of learning to cope with no longer being the man everyone is talking about.

Potted profile

Born: Kanye Omari West, on 8 June 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia

Career: Began producing music for local Chicago rappers in his teens and landed his first high-profile job in 1999. Launched his solo career with The College Dropout in 2004. Has released six platinum albums, won 21 Grammy awards, designed several clothing lines, and featured twice on the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. Runs the record label Good Music and the creative content company Donda.

High point: Bouncing back with his magnum opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010 after his snafu at the Video Music Awards temporarily derailed his career: even Barack Obama called him a jackass. In December 2014, Pitchfork named it the best album of the decade so far.

Low point: The death of his mother in 2007, soon followed by his split from fiancee Alexis Phifer.

What he says: I will die for the art, for what I believe in, and the art aint always going to be polite.

What they say: Hes a brilliant madman. He cant help himself. Like, he doesnt have the same filters other people have. He has to blurt things out hes always saying inappropriate stuff. But he also has brilliant ideas, if you can get him to pay attention long enough Madonna.

[jeremystrele]

‘Featherston’ · A New Monograph on the Legacy of the Australian Design Icons

‘Featherston’ · A New Monograph on the Legacy of the Australian Design Icons

Shopping

by Elle Murrell

The ‘Featherston’ monograph by Geoff Isaac. Photo – Amelia Stanwix.

Grant Featherston, pictured in the book’s opening pages. Photo – Amelia Stanwix.

Inside the monograph. Photo – Amelia Stanwix.

The book contains over 250 photographs. Photo – Adam Obradovic.

The monograph is almost 300 pages. Photo – Adam Obradovic.

A spread from the book. Photo – Amelia Stanwix.

Chapter two covers the iconic Contour Range. Photo – Amelia Stanwix.

Photo – Adam Obradovic.

‘Featherston’ also includes the story of Aristoc, the Melbourne-based manufacturer that made Featherston designs. Photo – Amelia Stanwix.

‘‘Featherston’ will appeal to anyone interested in mid-century design or Australian design,’ tells Geoff. Photo – Amelia Stanwix.

‘As my collection grew, I became increasingly frustrated by the lack of information available on the designer,’ tells Geoff, of his motivations to write the volume. Photo – Adam Obradovic.

At the Melbourne launch of ‘Featherston‘. Photo – Robert Wellington.

Though he doesn’t consider himself a design professional or academic, but merely an enthusiast, Geoff Isaac managed to convince more than 390 backers to pledge $47,360 to help bring his ‘Featherston’ book to life.

‘I came to write this book as no one else had!’ says the UK-born business graduate, who migrated to Australia in the late 1980s. Following a relationship separation in the early 1990s, Geoff found himself with a house but absolutely no furniture. ‘Being short of funds, I bought some second-hand furniture including  four dining chairs. Several years later, my financial situation having improved, I moved to a bigger home and sought some decent furniture. After several months of looking, I realised that I liked my tired, old, pre-loved dining chairs more than anything else I could find,’ tells Geoff, who later discovered them to be Scape Dining Chairs, designed by Grant Featherston for Aristoc in 1960.

After spending a fortune on renovating the chairs, Geoff became hooked and began collecting examples of Featherston’s best known designs, as well pieces from later in his career. Over the past seven years, Geoff’s passion developed into dedicated archival research and interviews, culminating in the pitch and publication of ‘Featherston’.

What made you decide to work towards publishing a book on Featherston furniture?

As my collection grew, I became increasingly frustrated by the lack of information available on the designer. Apart from a small catalogue, published to coincide with a 1988 retrospective held at the NGV, there are no publications available dedicated to the work of the Featherstons. I started collecting information, which all slowly started to evolve towards a book.

Who else has been involved in this epic undertaking?

I had just completed what I thought was the last interview for the book when Neil Clerehan suggested that I make contact with Ian Howard. Ian was the Managing Director at Aristoc, the Melbourne-based manufacturer that made Featherston designs for 13 years (from 1957), as well as a personal friend of Grant. To my delight I found Ian, at over 90 years of age, to be a fantastic source – with an extensive archive of company records and previously unpublished pictures to illustrate his vivid memories. Unfortunately, this discovery meant it took another couple of years to complete the project, but the end result is so much better for it. The Aristoc story is an important part of the success of the Featherstons’ career in chair design and has been included in full in the book.

What can readers expect from this monograph, with more than 250 photographs across almost 300 pages?

‘Featherston’ will appeal to anyone interested in mid-century design or Australian design. The book is also an interesting social history of the post-war years and will be of interest to many people living in Melbourne and beyond. I think people will be surprised by the vast number of chair designs produced by the Featherstons and the volume of production manufactured by Melbourne-based Aristoc.

What have been some of the highs and lows you’ve experienced in pursuing this passion project?

The most exciting thing was seeing the finished product – a few copies arrived in time for the launch at the end of July and I literally got to see the book about 10 minutes before people started arriving!

On the other hand, the most challenging part of the project was finding a publisher. After a year I gave up and decided to do it myself! Luckily, following the success of the crowdfunding campaign, Thames & Hudson came on board to take over the project.

What do you think are some of the factors that have led to your crowdfunding success?

Kickstarter is a great platform for raising funding, however it is important to remember it’s only a tool to collect and track the money. To run a successful campaign you need to have a promotion strategy, using press and online channels to gain exposure for your project.

I was lucky enough to get support from some influential bloggers and mid-century Facebook groups, which really helped publicise the book. Leonard Joel was also a big supporter and promoted the project to their data base of mid-century design enthusiasts, which was a great help toward reaching the fund-raising goal.

What’s next for Geoff Isaac, and can we hope for any more publications?

After the launches, I will be working hard to promote this book. I am starting to think about another book, but don’t hold your breath… this one took nearly seven years!

You can get your hands on a copy of ‘Featherston’ by ordering online, here, as well as at selected local bookstores across Australia.

[mysteryshelf]

BLOG TOUR - Scheduled to Death

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

Scheduled to Death by Mary Feliz

The mystery kept me guessing through the entire book…I was blaming the wrong person for about 80% of the story! ~Book Babble

… fast paced and fun to read. ~Sleuth Cafe

Each character was written with such care and love that they really jump from the page and they, like the books, just keeping getting better. ~Classy Cheapskate

I had a difficult time deciding who was my favorite character in this book. Each is well rounded and has something special bout them. ~Laura’s Interests

This captivating and fast-paced whodunit tale has enough quirky characters, witty humor, drama, a growing list of suspects, intriguing twists and turns, and conspiracy theories that will keep you guessing. ~Jersey Girl Book Reviews

The plot is well developed, suspects are numerous, and I enjoyed using my detecting skills right along with Maggie. ~The Power of Words

Scheduled to Death (A Maggie McDonald Mystery) Cozy Mystery 2nd in Series Lyrical Underground (January 17, 2017) Paperback: 236 pages ISBN-13: 978-1601836663 Digital Ebook – ASIN: B01EQ2N1QM

Professional organizer Maggie McDonald has a knack for cleaning up other people’s messes. So when the fiancée of her latest client turns up dead, it’s up to her to sort through the untidy list of suspects and identify the real killer.

Maggie McDonald is hoping to raise the profile of her new Orchard View organizing business via her first high-profile client. Professor Lincoln Sinclair may be up for a Nobel Prize, but he’s hopeless when it comes to organizing anything other than his thoughts. For an academic, he’s also amassed more than his share of enemies. When Sinclair’s fiancée is found dead on the floor of his home laboratory—electrocuted in a puddle of water—Maggie takes on the added task of finding the woman’s murderer. To do so, she’ll have to outmaneuver the suspicious, obnoxious police investigator she’s nicknamed “Detective Awful” before a shadowy figure can check off the first item on their personal to-do list—Kill Maggie McDonald.

Author Interview

  What initially got you interested in writing? I started my writing career in Corporate Communications writing about vacuum tubes and other industrial products — including my favorite project, which was writing about a giant piece of high-tech equipment that found its way to a jungle customer with the help of an elephant.

For someone who has always been constrained by reality, fiction is working without a net. A novel is like running a marathon. I’m not sure any writer can adequately explain the special kind of insanity that makes running a marathon across a tight rope seem like a good idea.

What genres do you write in?

I’m currently writing cozy mysteries, although I’ve also written two (unpublished) young adult historical novels that I hope to someday retool as romance. And then there’s this true crime story I’m itching to explore…like most writers, I have more ideas than I have time to pursue.

What drew you to writing these specific genres? I love cozy mysteries because they are essentially stories about good triumphing over evil. I love to read them because violence and gore give me nightmares and sex scenes make me blush. Cozy mysteries let me avoid the blood and guts and graphic romance, but still allow me to explore good, evil, and where they intersect. I find it interesting to consider why good people do bad things and why bad people do good things.

How did you break into the field? My story starts the same way it does for many writers…after 10-15 years of die-hard stubbornness, doubt, and too much chocolate, I “suddenly” woke up to the reality that one of the bazillions of people to whom I’d pitched my story was calling to say they loved my book and wanted to publish it. It was the third book I’d written. I’m still pinching myself.

What do you want readers to take away from reading your works? I hope that readers will fall in love with Maggie and her family, and be willing to hang in there with her when she makes mistakes on her journey to solve the crimes and save the day. Maggie’s intelligence and connections to her community help her follow the clues, but it’s the wrong turns she takes and her hopelessly bad luck that that move the plot along. I also hope they’ll come to know some of the complexities of life in Silicon Valley that aren’t covered in news broadcasts.

What do you find most rewarding about writing?

When someone writes a review that makes it clear they “get” Maggie, or when someone tells me they love a character and hope I’ll write more about them, it makes my day. What I love about reading is finding an author whose characters become so real to me that I miss when I finish the book. Whenever I hear that someone had an experience like that while reading one of my books, it definitely takes the sting out of long days, persistent typos, and nasty reviews.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

In order to stick with it long enough to have a book published, you have to love the process. And I do. But it’s not without some serious ups and downs. When I hit one of those lows, I turn to my writer friends to keep me balanced. Every one of the writers I know has received a text or email from me complaining that I’ll never resolve a plot problem that has me chasing down inconsistencies that make it feel as though I’m trying to put socks and sneakers on an octopus. Depending on the friend, they laugh and prescribe chocolate, wine, coffee, naps or a walk.

What advice would you give to people wanting to enter the field? If you don’t love it, don’t do it. Those who get published are those who stick with it…for years. Use those years to make friends with other writers, learn as much as you can, practice, and to make your writing the best it can be. Then make it better the next day. Those who don’t get published are those who give up. Also, don’t do it alone. Find teachers, friends, critiquers, editors, and beta readers who can help you strengthen your writing and support you on your journey. Don’t forget to give back–at every stage of the game. And have fun.

What type of books do you enjoy reading? I’m a promiscuous reader. I read everything from cereal boxes to epic novels and admire the story structure of song lyrics and television ads. My favorites, though, are those with complex characters I care deeply about. I’m a huge fan of Laurie King and Louise Penny.

Is there anything else besides writing you think people would find interesting about you?

I walk on the beach nearly every day and know the names of almost all the dogs but only a few of the people.

What are the best ways to connect with you, or find out more about your work?

My website is a good place to start: www.maryfeliz.com From there you can find links to my Facebook page, Twitter account, and how to email me or sign up for my newsletter. I love to hear from readers and answer my emails.

About The Author

Mary Feliz has lived in five states and two countries but calls Silicon Valley home. Traveling to other areas of the United States, she’s frequently reminded that what seems normal in the high-tech heartland can seem decidedly odd to the rest of the country. A big fan of irony, serendipity, diversity, and quirky intelligence tempered with gentle humor, Mary strives to bring these elements into her writing, although her characters tend to take these elements to a whole new level. She’s a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and National Association of Professional Organizers. Mary is a Smith College graduate with a degree in Sociology. She lives in Northern California with her husband, near the homes of their two adult offspring. Visit Mary online at MaryFeliz.com, or follow her on Twitter @MaryFelizAuthor.

  Purchase Links Amazon B&N

You can win your own copy! Giveaway – On February 10, the author will be giving away five ebook editions of both books to randomly selected names on my newsletter list. Here is the link where your followers can sign up for the newsletter – http://www.maryfeliz.com/newsletter/

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BLOG TOUR – Scheduled to Death was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf

[braverstrongerconfident]

Confident, Confidence, Confianza!

Confident: Feeling or showing confidence in oneself; Self-assured.

Did you know that research shows that:

“7 in 10 girls believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way, including their looks, performance in school and relationships with family and friends.”

“92 percent of teen girls would like to change something about the way they look, with body weight ranking the highest.”

“1 in 4 girls today fall into a clinical diagnosis – depression, eating disorders, cutting, and other mental/emotional disorders.  On top of these, many more report being constantly anxious, sleep deprived, and under significant pressure.” (The Triple Bind, Steven Hinshaw) Before college I was confident! I had just graduated at the top ten percent of my class, my GPA was a hair away from a 4.0 and I was accepted to many universities. Heck! I was going to UCSD which at the time and still is one of the top universities for majors in Political Science. (Just checked... U.S news ranks it #8) I was SET! I was going to do it and do it big! Not for one second did I think this was going to be hard! BUT.... College put me through the ringer mentally and emotionally! At the end of my first quarter my confidence went from 100 to 0, real quick! I received my transcript and had one B and two D’s! That B meant nothing to me! Nothing at all!!! What stood out even more to me was the little red words at the bottom of my transcript *ACADEMIC PROBATION* Guys! I had NEVER been on academic probation! My lowest grade ever was a C and it didn’t matter to me because it was probably in math! Hahaha! But that first quarter in college killed me. I can still remember that quarter I came home. My self-esteem was down the drain. I literally sat there and pondered not going back. Maybe this place really wasn’t meant for me. Maybe I had defied the statistics in high school because I went to a low-income school. For the next few days all I could think about was statistics and what researched showed... I thought about my ethnicity, my gender, my upbringing and some of the following... “Latinas hold only 7.4 percent of the degrees earned by women”

“In 2012, Hispanics accounted for just 9% of young adults (ages 25 to 29) with bachelor’s degrees.”

Maybe I really wasn’t meant for this... This university was too big! I was too small and not smart enough to do this. I remember sitting there telling my mom how I felt... All she could do was tell me that it was my choice and my call. I knew her heart was breaking because there was absolutely nothing she could tell me to make it better. In that moment I decided to give it another go. I mean what was the worse that could happen? I would be kicked out but at least I would know that I failed, got back up, and tried again!

Thank God for courage to try again!

The next quarter I came back! Still a little worried and anxious that I might not make it but confident that I would give it all I had. I tried harder, asked questions, went to office hours and did whatever I could to make sure I was understanding the material. Ladies and Gents it paid off! I got a 4.0 and went from Academic probation to Honor Roll! I regained my confidence! I was not going to be another statistic! I would not drop out or be evicted from the premises! LOL

After that quarter I genuinely believed I could do anything I put my mind to! Not going to say everything was smooth sailing! There were quarters that were harder than others! There were times I wondered if I would make it through the next 3, 2, 1 years. There were plenty of times I thought of throwing in the towel. Plenty of times I wished for someone who was the color of my skin who understood my struggle! & thankfully I found those women towards the end of my undergraduate career! I truly do not think I would have made it without them! Today I hold my head high because  although I missed graduating with honors (by like point something! Hahah!) I graduated UCSD with two Bachelor’s and a few classes away from a minor. I studied abroad in Berlin, Germany, interned at the court house, helped run and won a mayoral campaign! I mean, it was epic! & I am so PROUD of myself!

It’s not about my accomplishments, what I do, or what I’ve done.

It IS ABOUT the time I wish I had someone who truly walked in my shoes and could relate to me on a personal level. It IS about all the women out there who feel limited by what society tells us we can do. It IS about my Hispanic/Latina sisters who have the statistics and sometimes even familial stereotypes stacked against them! It is about ALL of us who lack confidence! Who lack role models! And who lack courage! It IS also about ALL of us who want more for ourselves! More than our mothers, fathers, ancestors. Etc! It is about ALL those who are seeking to pave new roads! Take courage and be confident in this!

YOU and ONLY YOU can stand in your own way!

You and ONLY YOU can limit yourself!

You are not destined to be what statistics say you are! You WILL fail/fall at some point in life but only you can choose to stay there! You will cry and it will be hard but YOU need to decide to get back up.

I pray that wherever you are on your life journey you have the CONFIDENCE to get back up! The confidence to take that job opportunity! The confidence to take the leap of faith! And if you’ve fallen and have hit rock bottom I pray that you understand that there is only one way left: UP! I pray for a spirit of confidence upon your life! & I wish you nothing less than success because you deserve it!

I can not end this post without giving glory to God! Because in my toughest moments he has been my resting place! My source of confidence comes from him! I am grateful.

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it out to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” Philippians 1:6

Articles: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2013/11/07/79167/fact-sheet-the-state-of-latinas-in-the-united-states/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/24/more-hispanics-blacks-enrolling-in-college-but-lag-in-bachelors-degrees/

[logancfrench]

The Story of a Storyteller Who Became a Vidyard Customer

Have you met someone recently where you thought, “Wow, you’re inspiring! How did you do that? What could I do with if I had your knowledge or passion or skills?” Well I have. And I didn’t have to go far to find her, because her company is a Vidyard customer.

Stephanie Totty works at ExamSoft. The software company creates assessment software for educators and students. Now, exams might dredge up feelings of anxiety and memories of cramming too hard too fast, and drooling on the pages of your textbooks (please tell me I’m not the only one!). But ExamSoft is dedicated to creating a better experience for educators and for their students. Like at TSTC School of Nursing, where the software helped educators connect with students who needed additional help and remediation, bringing their board exam pass rates from a 77% to a 100% within a year. And at Touro College of Medicine New York, where ExamSoft data helped improve student performance and decrease student dropout, saving the school over $2 million in tuition.  

Wowzers.

It’s clear ExamSoft, and Stephanie, were doing amazing things. How do they do it? It turns out, Vidyard has played a big role: Through video, they reach more and more people through the powerful medium, since it’s more engaging than other formats like text. Using Vidyard, they are learning exactly what content their audience is truly interested in, and are having great success delivering the right messages to the right people.

But only a few years ago, video wasn’t even on ExamSoft’s radar.

ExamSoft had no video content to speak of, and no plans to change that. So what happened? Why did ExamSoft make the leap into video with Vidyard? And who was brave enough to strap on ExamSoft’s figurative running shoes, stretch calf muscles, take the risk and clear the hurdle?

Can you guess? Stephanie Totty, Senior Content Strategy Manager at ExamSoft. I was lucky to sit down and chat with her about how she does it all, what drives her success, and why she loves ExamSoft and what she does.

Stephanie Totty, Senior Content Strategy Manager at ExamSoft

J.K. Rowling should probably never come over for dinner.

I quickly discovered that Stephanie and I shared a passion: storytelling. Stephanie told me she’s always considered herself a storyteller. As a child, she loved learning and writing, and as she grew, Stephanie found inspiration from some of the greatest stories and storytellers, including Star Wars, Tolkien and his epic Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter, created by J.K. Rowling (who, if Stephanie could host a fantasy dinner party, would be the guest of choice. “I would serve 15 courses just to keep her at my table longer!” Stephanie says unrepentantly during our chat. I could only agree: I would follow suit and maybe even lock my doors.).

Writing and storytelling was never just a pastime or hobby. It helped Stephanie shape her career as a content marketer: “One of the things that struck me about J.K. Rowling is she would drop what seemed like minor details into the first Harry Potter books, and by the time you got to the seventh book, those minor details actually showed themselves to be the basis for the whole story!” It was a vital lesson to a content marketer: “You can’t just put any words down on paper or a screen. You have to put effort into crafting your story and determining what the real point of it is.”

Storytelling is a way to share a powerful message, but you have to know what the right message is. Audiences are different, and good marketers know that the story that works for one person may not work to convince someone else. ExamSoft software means a lot of different things to different users, and Stephanie knows that “one story may go completely over someone’s head or not be applicable to their wants and needs. Content marketers must make sure that they’re NOT telling the story they want to tell.” Sound a bit crazy? She clarifies: “Instead, they need to be telling the story—or stories!—that resonate with whatever audience is currently consuming the content.”

So how can you know what the right story is?

But how could Stephanie and the ExamSoft marketing team know for sure what the right stories were? How could they create a human connection and build relationships with audiences?

Stephanie realized that video could help. As an online video consumer herself and voracious self-learner, Stephanie knew video was a new and powerful marketing trend that could have lasting impact. That’s why she took a closer look at Vidyard, despite not having a video strategy, when the video platform was presented as a good fit for her business.

Vidyard offered analytics that ExamSoft hadn’t known were possible, like who was watching which videos, how long they were staying engaged, and what kind of content was performing the best. If Stephanie could get her hands on insights like that, she could make sure ExamSoft was delivering the content their audience wanted and needed. On top of that: “The Vidyard salesperson we worked with at the time was very hard to say no to. He was enjoyable and kept going the extra distance to make us happy, which is something we try to do ourselves for ExamSoft customers. It felt like Vidyard and ExamSoft valued the same things: building strong relationships, and sharing the right stories with the right people.”

So Stephanie discussed Vidyard with her VP of Marketing, who agreed that the analytics Vidyard could offer, as well as the deep integration with the marketing automation platform and CRM that they were already using, could only help them understand their leads even better.

Video can teach lessons, if you’re willing to learn.

Embracing video felt a bit overwhelming at first—where should they start? How many resources and how much time would it take? But the whole ExamSoft marketing team jumped in, spending much of 2016 focusing on creating video content for every discipline, persona, and pain point—in fact, in 2016 alone, the team created over 200 videos! And when Vidyard’s analytics told them some content wasn’t resonating with their audiences, they tried again. Getting insights on how they could improve really spoke to Stephanie, because again, it seemed Vidyard was in line with ExamSoft’s own value proposition: ExamSoft is dedicated to helping people learn and grow. The exam software itself “gives in-depth analytics to students on their performance, helping them learn what they did and didn’t do well in, and what they can focus on to improve.”

What Stephanie and the ExamSoft marketing team learned from Vidyard was immensely valuable: “We didn’t need to go super-fancy to have major impact.” They created a lot of webinar content, and focused a lot on customer testimonials as well, because this content continued to shine. As these insights from Vidyard showed them, “academics want to hear from academics”. These content types became “low cost/high reward” assets for ExamSoft and their audiences.

One of the most interesting things they learned? “We believed ExamSoft’s software analytics were the strongest part of our story, so we had been focusing on that. But Vidyard data indicated that our audiences also really wanted to hear about our security features, and to date, our second strongest performing video is on ExamSoft’s security!” (The video is outranked only by their general demo video.) You can check out the video yourself:

There’s nothing better than earning your success.

But it’s not about finding out which topic you should or shouldn’t focus on. There was a bigger message, one to be inspired by. Stephanie’s passion for storytelling and drive to keep learning will help her and her company achieve greater success: “Even when you think you know something, there’s still so much you can learn. You can still rewrite your story and become a better, stronger storyteller and marketer.” We can imagine even J.K. Rowling would be proud….

The whole ExamSoft marketing team is behind her. 2017 at ExamSoft has been declared the year to create the right content for the right people. I can’t wait to see what they create next! Have you been inspired by Stephanie and what ExamSoft has achieved? How are you using video to strengthen your own stories and connect with your audiences?

Want to learn more about other organizations’ success with Vidyard? Check out more Customer Success stories.

The post The Story of a Storyteller Who Became a Vidyard Customer appeared first on Vidyard.

from News By Logan French http://www.vidyard.com/blog/story-storyteller-became-vidyard-customer/

[mahtewtwook86]

The Story of a Storyteller Who Became a Vidyard Customer

Have you met someone recently where you thought, “Wow, you’re inspiring! How did you do that? What could I do with if I had your knowledge or passion or skills?” Well I have. And I didn’t have to go far to find her, because her company is a Vidyard customer.

Stephanie Totty works at ExamSoft. The software company creates assessment software for educators and students. Now, exams might dredge up feelings of anxiety and memories of cramming too hard too fast, and drooling on the pages of your textbooks (please tell me I’m not the only one!). But ExamSoft is dedicated to creating a better experience for educators and for their students. Like at TSTC School of Nursing, where the software helped educators connect with students who needed additional help and remediation, bringing their board exam pass rates from a 77% to a 100% within a year. And at Touro College of Medicine New York, where ExamSoft data helped improve student performance and decrease student dropout, saving the school over $2 million in tuition.  

Wowzers.

It’s clear ExamSoft, and Stephanie, were doing amazing things. How do they do it? It turns out, Vidyard has played a big role: Through video, they reach more and more people through the powerful medium, since it’s more engaging than other formats like text. Using Vidyard, they are learning exactly what content their audience is truly interested in, and are having great success delivering the right messages to the right people.

But only a few years ago, video wasn’t even on ExamSoft’s radar.

ExamSoft had no video content to speak of, and no plans to change that. So what happened? Why did ExamSoft make the leap into video with Vidyard? And who was brave enough to strap on ExamSoft’s figurative running shoes, stretch calf muscles, take the risk and clear the hurdle?

Can you guess? Stephanie Totty, Senior Content Strategy Manager at ExamSoft. I was lucky to sit down and chat with her about how she does it all, what drives her success, and why she loves ExamSoft and what she does.

Stephanie Totty, Senior Content Strategy Manager at ExamSoft

J.K. Rowling should probably never come over for dinner.

I quickly discovered that Stephanie and I shared a passion: storytelling. Stephanie told me she’s always considered herself a storyteller. As a child, she loved learning and writing, and as she grew, Stephanie found inspiration from some of the greatest stories and storytellers, including Star Wars, Tolkien and his epic Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter, created by J.K. Rowling (who, if Stephanie could host a fantasy dinner party, would be the guest of choice. “I would serve 15 courses just to keep her at my table longer!” Stephanie says unrepentantly during our chat. I could only agree: I would follow suit and maybe even lock my doors.).

Writing and storytelling was never just a pastime or hobby. It helped Stephanie shape her career as a content marketer: “One of the things that struck me about J.K. Rowling is she would drop what seemed like minor details into the first Harry Potter books, and by the time you got to the seventh book, those minor details actually showed themselves to be the basis for the whole story!” It was a vital lesson to a content marketer: “You can’t just put any words down on paper or a screen. You have to put effort into crafting your story and determining what the real point of it is.”

Storytelling is a way to share a powerful message, but you have to know what the right message is. Audiences are different, and good marketers know that the story that works for one person may not work to convince someone else. ExamSoft software means a lot of different things to different users, and Stephanie knows that “one story may go completely over someone’s head or not be applicable to their wants and needs. Content marketers must make sure that they’re NOT telling the story they want to tell.” Sound a bit crazy? She clarifies: “Instead, they need to be telling the story—or stories!—that resonate with whatever audience is currently consuming the content.”

So how can you know what the right story is?

But how could Stephanie and the ExamSoft marketing team know for sure what the right stories were? How could they create a human connection and build relationships with audiences?

Stephanie realized that video could help. As an online video consumer herself and voracious self-learner, Stephanie knew video was a new and powerful marketing trend that could have lasting impact. That’s why she took a closer look at Vidyard, despite not having a video strategy, when the video platform was presented as a good fit for her business.

Vidyard offered analytics that ExamSoft hadn’t known were possible, like who was watching which videos, how long they were staying engaged, and what kind of content was performing the best. If Stephanie could get her hands on insights like that, she could make sure ExamSoft was delivering the content their audience wanted and needed. On top of that: “The Vidyard salesperson we worked with at the time was very hard to say no to. He was enjoyable and kept going the extra distance to make us happy, which is something we try to do ourselves for ExamSoft customers. It felt like Vidyard and ExamSoft valued the same things: building strong relationships, and sharing the right stories with the right people.”

So Stephanie discussed Vidyard with her VP of Marketing, who agreed that the analytics Vidyard could offer, as well as the deep integration with the marketing automation platform and CRM that they were already using, could only help them understand their leads even better.

Video can teach lessons, if you’re willing to learn.

Embracing video felt a bit overwhelming at first—where should they start? How many resources and how much time would it take? But the whole ExamSoft marketing team jumped in, spending much of 2016 focusing on creating video content for every discipline, persona, and pain point—in fact, in 2016 alone, the team created over 200 videos! And when Vidyard’s analytics told them some content wasn’t resonating with their audiences, they tried again. Getting insights on how they could improve really spoke to Stephanie, because again, it seemed Vidyard was in line with ExamSoft’s own value proposition: ExamSoft is dedicated to helping people learn and grow. The exam software itself “gives in-depth analytics to students on their performance, helping them learn what they did and didn’t do well in, and what they can focus on to improve.”

What Stephanie and the ExamSoft marketing team learned from Vidyard was immensely valuable: “We didn’t need to go super-fancy to have major impact.” They created a lot of webinar content, and focused a lot on customer testimonials as well, because this content continued to shine. As these insights from Vidyard showed them, “academics want to hear from academics”. These content types became “low cost/high reward” assets for ExamSoft and their audiences.

One of the most interesting things they learned? “We believed ExamSoft’s software analytics were the strongest part of our story, so we had been focusing on that. But Vidyard data indicated that our audiences also really wanted to hear about our security features, and to date, our second strongest performing video is on ExamSoft’s security!” (The video is outranked only by their general demo video.) You can check out the video yourself:

There’s nothing better than earning your success.

But it’s not about finding out which topic you should or shouldn’t focus on. There was a bigger message, one to be inspired by. Stephanie’s passion for storytelling and drive to keep learning will help her and her company achieve greater success: “Even when you think you know something, there’s still so much you can learn. You can still rewrite your story and become a better, stronger storyteller and marketer.” We can imagine even J.K. Rowling would be proud….

The whole ExamSoft marketing team is behind her. 2017 at ExamSoft has been declared the year to create the right content for the right people. I can’t wait to see what they create next! Have you been inspired by Stephanie and what ExamSoft has achieved? How are you using video to strengthen your own stories and connect with your audiences?

Want to learn more about other organizations’ success with Vidyard? Check out more Customer Success stories.

The post The Story of a Storyteller Who Became a Vidyard Customer appeared first on Vidyard.

from http://www.vidyard.com/blog/story-storyteller-became-vidyard-customer/

[peterjcameron]

The Story of a Storyteller Who Became a Vidyard Customer

Have you met someone recently where you thought, “Wow, you’re inspiring! How did you do that? What could I do with if I had your knowledge or passion or skills?” Well I have. And I didn’t have to go far to find her, because her company is a Vidyard customer.

Stephanie Totty works at ExamSoft. The software company creates assessment software for educators and students. Now, exams might dredge up feelings of anxiety and memories of cramming too hard too fast, and drooling on the pages of your textbooks (please tell me I’m not the only one!). But ExamSoft is dedicated to creating a better experience for educators and for their students. Like at TSTC School of Nursing, where the software helped educators connect with students who needed additional help and remediation, bringing their board exam pass rates from a 77% to a 100% within a year. And at Touro College of Medicine New York, where ExamSoft data helped improve student performance and decrease student dropout, saving the school over $2 million in tuition.  

Wowzers.

It’s clear ExamSoft, and Stephanie, were doing amazing things. How do they do it? It turns out, Vidyard has played a big role: Through video, they reach more and more people through the powerful medium, since it’s more engaging than other formats like text. Using Vidyard, they are learning exactly what content their audience is truly interested in, and are having great success delivering the right messages to the right people.

But only a few years ago, video wasn’t even on ExamSoft’s radar.

ExamSoft had no video content to speak of, and no plans to change that. So what happened? Why did ExamSoft make the leap into video with Vidyard? And who was brave enough to strap on ExamSoft’s figurative running shoes, stretch calf muscles, take the risk and clear the hurdle?

Can you guess? Stephanie Totty, Senior Content Strategy Manager at ExamSoft. I was lucky to sit down and chat with her about how she does it all, what drives her success, and why she loves ExamSoft and what she does.

Stephanie Totty, Senior Content Strategy Manager at ExamSoft

J.K. Rowling should probably never come over for dinner.

I quickly discovered that Stephanie and I shared a passion: storytelling. Stephanie told me she’s always considered herself a storyteller. As a child, she loved learning and writing, and as she grew, Stephanie found inspiration from some of the greatest stories and storytellers, including Star Wars, Tolkien and his epic Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter, created by J.K. Rowling (who, if Stephanie could host a fantasy dinner party, would be the guest of choice. “I would serve 15 courses just to keep her at my table longer!” Stephanie says unrepentantly during our chat. I could only agree: I would follow suit and maybe even lock my doors.).

Writing and storytelling was never just a pastime or hobby. It helped Stephanie shape her career as a content marketer: “One of the things that struck me about J.K. Rowling is she would drop what seemed like minor details into the first Harry Potter books, and by the time you got to the seventh book, those minor details actually showed themselves to be the basis for the whole story!” It was a vital lesson to a content marketer: “You can’t just put any words down on paper or a screen. You have to put effort into crafting your story and determining what the real point of it is.”

Storytelling is a way to share a powerful message, but you have to know what the right message is. Audiences are different, and good marketers know that the story that works for one person may not work to convince someone else. ExamSoft software means a lot of different things to different users, and Stephanie knows that “one story may go completely over someone’s head or not be applicable to their wants and needs. Content marketers must make sure that they’re NOT telling the story they want to tell.” Sound a bit crazy? She clarifies: “Instead, they need to be telling the story—or stories!—that resonate with whatever audience is currently consuming the content.”

So how can you know what the right story is?

But how could Stephanie and the ExamSoft marketing team know for sure what the right stories were? How could they create a human connection and build relationships with audiences?

Stephanie realized that video could help. As an online video consumer herself and voracious self-learner, Stephanie knew video was a new and powerful marketing trend that could have lasting impact. That’s why she took a closer look at Vidyard, despite not having a video strategy, when the video platform was presented as a good fit for her business.

Vidyard offered analytics that ExamSoft hadn’t known were possible, like who was watching which videos, how long they were staying engaged, and what kind of content was performing the best. If Stephanie could get her hands on insights like that, she could make sure ExamSoft was delivering the content their audience wanted and needed. On top of that: “The Vidyard salesperson we worked with at the time was very hard to say no to. He was enjoyable and kept going the extra distance to make us happy, which is something we try to do ourselves for ExamSoft customers. It felt like Vidyard and ExamSoft valued the same things: building strong relationships, and sharing the right stories with the right people.”

So Stephanie discussed Vidyard with her VP of Marketing, who agreed that the analytics Vidyard could offer, as well as the deep integration with the marketing automation platform and CRM that they were already using, could only help them understand their leads even better.

Video can teach lessons, if you’re willing to learn.

Embracing video felt a bit overwhelming at first—where should they start? How many resources and how much time would it take? But the whole ExamSoft marketing team jumped in, spending much of 2016 focusing on creating video content for every discipline, persona, and pain point—in fact, in 2016 alone, the team created over 200 videos! And when Vidyard’s analytics told them some content wasn’t resonating with their audiences, they tried again. Getting insights on how they could improve really spoke to Stephanie, because again, it seemed Vidyard was in line with ExamSoft’s own value proposition: ExamSoft is dedicated to helping people learn and grow. The exam software itself “gives in-depth analytics to students on their performance, helping them learn what they did and didn’t do well in, and what they can focus on to improve.”

What Stephanie and the ExamSoft marketing team learned from Vidyard was immensely valuable: “We didn’t need to go super-fancy to have major impact.” They created a lot of webinar content, and focused a lot on customer testimonials as well, because this content continued to shine. As these insights from Vidyard showed them, “academics want to hear from academics”. These content types became “low cost/high reward” assets for ExamSoft and their audiences.

One of the most interesting things they learned? “We believed ExamSoft’s software analytics were the strongest part of our story, so we had been focusing on that. But Vidyard data indicated that our audiences also really wanted to hear about our security features, and to date, our second strongest performing video is on ExamSoft’s security!” (The video is outranked only by their general demo video.) You can check out the video yourself:

There’s nothing better than earning your success.

But it’s not about finding out which topic you should or shouldn’t focus on. There was a bigger message, one to be inspired by. Stephanie’s passion for storytelling and drive to keep learning will help her and her company achieve greater success: “Even when you think you know something, there’s still so much you can learn. You can still rewrite your story and become a better, stronger storyteller and marketer.” We can imagine even J.K. Rowling would be proud….

The whole ExamSoft marketing team is behind her. 2017 at ExamSoft has been declared the year to create the right content for the right people. I can’t wait to see what they create next! Have you been inspired by Stephanie and what ExamSoft has achieved? How are you using video to strengthen your own stories and connect with your audiences?

Want to learn more about other organizations’ success with Vidyard? Check out more Customer Success stories.

The post The Story of a Storyteller Who Became a Vidyard Customer appeared first on Vidyard.

from Peter Cameron Business Consultant http://www.vidyard.com/blog/story-storyteller-became-vidyard-customer/