My immensely competitive nature often proves to be both a blessing and a curse. Most of the impressive feats of my life can largely be attributed to a combination of my overwhelming desire to prove myself and comically poor time management. Writing sixty percent of my master’s thesis in a day and a half was most definitely a poor life choice, but I still brag about it out of a sense of misguided superiority. Click title for full column.

Perhaps I am lying to myself so that I’m not consistently depressed at how absentminded I can be, but I think it is an almost universal experience to walk into a room, stare blankly into the distance for a moment, and then leave with no recollection whatsoever of what it was we were supposed to be doing in the first place. Along with actively searching for an item that I am currently holding in my hand, it is among the most frustrating failures of my brain. Click on title for full column.