Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! Have I mentioned how lucky I am to have fabulous students who become fabulous alumni? No? Well let me tell you. This week I had three of my fabulous former students, Ashley (‘19), Meghan (‘18), and Sam (‘20) come back to talk to my current juniors about careers in long-term care (i.e., nursing homes). All three of these young women discovered the long-term care field while they were in my program, interned in a long-term care facility, and then graduated and became nursing home administrators. As you can tell from the years they graduated, they are still in their twenties, and they are running large organizations and responsible for the well-being of many fragile people. They are an impressive group. After they talked to my students, I had several decide that they now wanted to do their internship in long-term care, just like these young women did. So now I am scrambling to spin up more long-term care opportunities. It’s a good problem to have. We need more quality leaders entering the long-term care field. But it’s so great to see young grads coming back and showing current students what is possible. This is one of my favorite things - to facilitate young people finding their way.
This semester is a little crazy - I am acting chair while the boss is on sabbatical. So I am, after a lengthy period, back in a leadership role. It’s interesting to have this responsibility again. Or, more properly, responsibility. I’ve kind of gotten used to being a one-man show doing whatever I thought was necessary (and fun - like writing a newsletter and making podcasts). I feel like someone caught me and told me to start adulting again. To be honest, it’s actually been kind of fun - like exercising muscles you have not worked in many years. And I’ll happily hand the reins back to the boss when he gets back. I feel like I have more Peter Pan’ing to do before I am ready to give up my freedom for a term as chair. (That’s the weird thing about academia - the chair is elected from the department’s faculty, and is first among equals for a limited time. Kind of like speaker of the house in Congress. So most chairs do a few terms, then step down and someone else takes a turn. It was definitely different from my prior military life.)
I hope you enjoy the links, and don’t let anyone catch your shadow! As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: Our World in Data, How has world population growth changed over time?
https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth-over-time
Why: Answer: it has dramatically slowed, and will eventually reverse and begin to decline. Most developed countries have already seen a decline in birth rates. Many are facing a secular decline in population as fewer babies are born and the elderly population dies off. The main question is, what will this do to society?
We can be sure, to maintain our quality of life, we will desperately need technological progress. AI promises some of that. (see Sal Khan in Watch below.)
The report is worth glancing through.
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Watch
What: TED Talk, Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education (16 min)
https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_how_ai_could_save_not_destroy_education?language=en
Why: Sal Khan is the founder of Khan Academy. In this video he demonstrates how Khan Academy is integrating AI into its free tutorial services. I was already a fan of Khan Academy, but this looks like a game changer. He makes the point at the beginning of the video that students who have individual tutors are far more successful in learning than students in the typical lecture model. He then shows how Khan academy is creating individualized tutoring using AI. It looks fantastic.
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Listen
What: Top Traders Unplugged, The Fund - The Other Side of Dalio & Bridgewater ft. Rob Copeland (46 min)
Why: Ray Dalio runs a hedge fund called Bridgewater Associates. For people in finance, or for people like me who live around the edges of the finance world (finance adjacent? finance curious?), Dalio is an outsized name. He’s known in particular for his management principles and how he runs his firm. He’s famous for “radical transparency”. Here’s Dalio’s TED Talk on radical transparency, in case you are interested. This pod is an interview with a NYT reporter who is calling B-S on Dalio. Even if you don’t know much (or anything) about Dalio and Bridgewater, I think you will find this interview interesting. The author, Copeland, tells a story of how power is abused inside of Bridgewater to make Dalio look good, and that is a story that repeats itself across many human organizations.