What happens when you email a stranger for help?
TL;DR: Sometimes you get a yes. In August of 2019 I went looking for the highest person I could find at Burton Snowboards, and on the eighth I sent a cold email asking for help with equipment. It turned out I had emailed Jake Burton’s assistant. I picked a...
Should a bad first grade make you drop the class?
TL;DR: No. I got an F on my first college English paper and I cried like it was the end of the world. I stayed in the class anyway. By the end of that semester I had one of the top grades in it, and I had finally learned how to write. English was an elective. I took...
How do you help someone without making it a big deal?
TL;DR: You do it before anybody has to ask, and then you say nothing about it. My first day of adaptive snowboarding, I walked into a packed yurt in Pennsylvania and could not find anywhere to sit. A man with white hair scooted over and made room. That is the whole...
Why does a stroke patient stop talking?
TL;DR: Usually because talking makes us feel stupid, not because we have nothing to say. After my stroke at fifteen I had word-finding trouble. I could look straight at an object, know exactly what it was, and never reach the word for it. So I went quiet at the...
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