What I Learn From My NYU Students

I teach for a lot of reasons. At the top of the list is because I genuinely enjoy it. I like my students. I like educating. I like encouraging people to think.

I also teach because I like learning. Anyone who has ever taught, and taught well, will tell you that teaching forces you to know more about a subject than you would otherwise. It keeps you at the top of your game.

But that is only part of what I learn. I also learn what my students teach me.

I tell them that going in. That I expect that I will learn from them. For starters it's a graduate class in digital marketing. The subject matter is a work in progress with new tools and new approaches occurring every day. It's impossible to know every single detail, but we need to try. Sharing what we find is our best hope to stay ahead of the changes. 

But there is more to what I learn than that.

The majority of my students are international. The global perspective they bring from sharing something as simple as how in Taiwan 7-11 is a much bigger part of the community than simply a place to buy a Slurpee enriches my classroom. It also forces me to slow it down and think more carefully how I might explain a concept since for many English is not their first language. I can't assume because something is widely understood in the US, it is in the rest of the world. They teach me how to present better in the classroom. The bonus is it hones my skills for when I am working with my outside clients.


I've learned that just because one generation is inherently more comfortable with technology, does not mean with that comes an understanding of how to use all these new tools strategically.  Generations need not be divided by technological advance but rather help each other as we learn this new stuff by getting our hands dirty - together.

Most importantly they teach me by offering  what Arianna Huffington calls "third metric" moments in which I can define my success not by power or how much money I am making (trust me - adjuncts are not highly compensated employees) but in having changed someone's way of looking at something.

When a student tells me I "inspired" them or thanks me for "seeing their potential" or "encouraging" them I am keenly aware of the ability we all have to make a difference in someone's life. 

I will never forget the student who this semester when I asked the class what they got out of their midterm presentation in which they were required to present themselves as a brand in three minutes, said the one thing she did not expect was that the experience would make her fall in love with who she was again.  

Moments like that make me downright teary eyed and others just make me smile. Like the email I got yesterday from a student who just finished the semester with me and "had to share" how she experienced first hand the power of connection that social media affords us when she shared a picture on Instagram of her favorite bakery.

What I learn from my students - it's why I teach.


ps. You don't have to be an NYU graduate degree student to  have me teach you. Your Digital You - the blueprint - a workshop designed to improve your digital profile returns with two dates in June - 6/12 and 6/24. Use the code EARLYbird for a special discount.

pps. My workshops can be customized and brought in-house to your company or organization. Email me for more information.

Writing Without A Keyboard

I've taken notes for as long as I can remember. It was ingrained in my NYC public school education to take notes. Even when my short term memory was much sharper and not flooded with today's information overload, I never trusted what I might remember. I was told if I took notes I would learn more. I listened and it has always proven true.

I had one boss who questioned me on my note taking. In reflection I suppose he wondered what he was saying that was of that much interest that I would take notes. But take notes I continued to do, because that is how I absorb. Or in the case of those meetings, probably how I stayed awake and focused.

As a writer, for a long time I could not think creatively on a keyboard. For me, writing on paper first was the best way to get a good story going. While I have trained my creativity to type on a keyboard  some days only a pen will do. And always, always, always, if I want a good edit, I have to print out and write my notes in the margins.

The problem now is that I don't always understand what I write. My thoughts often flow much quicker than my hand. I try to compensate for that by transcribing to my computer sooner than later.

It wasn't always like that. I used to get As in penmanship. You see when I went to school it was considered a subject and there were samples of each letter of the alphabet, capital and small, in cursive and print, bordering the top of the chalkboard.

Penmanship involved a lot of copying. It took time. I saw it as an easy A. Keep it neat and take some pride and it helped my grade point average.

Plus I was learning. I learned what a sentence was supposed to look like. I absorbed whatever silly information we were given to copy.

And I never forgot what I was taught. That I would learn more by taking notes than just listening to a lecture. That it was a useful exercise to discern what I thought most important from the lesson by writing it down.

The cover section of the WSJ today has a feature entitled, How Handwriting Trains The Brain. They discuss all this and some more as if it is all brand new information, that for the first time we are just understanding that writing helps learning.

They referred to handwriting as an "ancient skill." I was distressed to learn that penmanship, while still taught in "most" schools amounts to just over an hour a week. Mmm. And we are wondering why our schools are failing.

We rely on technology to write for us, think for us, and  assume it will give us all the research possible in a Google search. And apparently we are teaching this over reliance on technology to our children. Why learn the mechanics of penmanship when you have a keyboard? No matter that you might learn more and think more creatively through the simple act of pen to paper.

The other thing ingrained in my public school education was not to believe everything you read. With all due respect to the reporter, while I am certain much of the research the article cites is new, the correlation between learning, the brain and the pen is not.

I'd like to tell her my original source, but I never wrote it down.

Do you take notes?
Do you absorb more information when you do?
Are you horrified that just over an hour a week is devoted to teaching children penmanship?




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