RWL Newsletter #121
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! I taught my last classes of the semester on Monday. The day classes begin always feels like I am standing at start of a marathon - it feels like this thing is so long it is almost insurmountable. And then it feels like suddenly it is over. We’re in finals now, grading, grading, grading. Uggh. It’s the least fun part of the job. But commencement is a week from tomorrow, and that is always pretty awesome. A week from today we have our senior banquet and I will be farewelling the first class that I have seen all the way through from freshman year. One of the students who was in the first class I taught at UNH took my org behavior class this semester as one of her last classes before she graduates. That’s kind of a neat way to wrap things up. I might be a little emotional about this.
(my tradition of taking a picture of my empty classroom)
Here’s this week’s links:
Read
What: “People Who Take Care” by Nancy Henry
http://ed2dq.com/2015/12/22/people-who-take-care-by-nancy-henry/
Why: Happy Nurses Week! I happened to come across this poem in an anthology I’ve been reading and it resonated with me. From the poem:
people who take care of people
are not worth much
except to people who are
sick, old, helpless, and poor
I’ve never been a direct care provider, so I don’t have some of the experiences described with people outside of my family (I have three kids - I have dealt with my share of bodily excretions).
This desire to care motivates many teachers - for sure, it is the thing that motivates me. I don’t take care of sick and old, instead I get to help develop the young and help guide them toward full potential. That’s pretty awesome, and I’m quite lucky to get paid to do it.
Watch
What: Arthur C. Brooks, More Love, Less Contempt (12 min)
Why: Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute. This is a recording of his commencement speech at BYU. I liked his distinction between anger and contempt. Anger can be an appropriate emotion if one wants to generate change. Contempt is an attitude that flattens and reduces a person into something worthless. This is not an attitude that generates change. It simply generates hate.
Listen
What: JAMA, Study Puts Eggs and Dietary Cholesterol Back on the Radar (21 min)
https://player.fm/series/hbr-ideacast/ep-679-what-managers-get-wrong-about-feedback
Why: Eggs are bad. Eggs are good. Eggs are bad. Yep, they’re bad. Maybe. Here we go again. It’s an interesting story. So dietary cholesterol is bad for you. Egg yolks have dietary cholesterol, so eggs are bad.
I like the JAMA podcast - it’s a bit technical, but it’s kind of fun to listen to.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line by e-mail, or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
Also, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
Have a great weekend and do amazing things!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." - Henry David Thoreau