• San Diego

    I loved living in San Diego.  I moved there in 1990 to begin my freshman year at UC San Diego, a school that I would probably never get into today if  I applied!  UCSD was perched on the cliffs of La Jolla, and if you had the right dorm room, like my friend Natalie did, your dorm room might even have an ocean view. I met my now husband, Greg, at UCSD in 1992.  He’s from the Bay Area, but I did not hold that against him as long as he didn’t limit my paper towel usage.  We are a mixed marriage-I’m Catholic and he is Jewish, he is a…

  • Baseball and How It Relates to Life

    By Colby M Brown Baseball has been my favorite sport ever since I can remember. The crack of the bat, the sound of the ball hitting the glove, all bring me joy. Baseball also has a lot of lessons that can relate to life. A strong work ethic, learning from failure, and having fun, are three valuable lessons I have learned from baseball that I apply to my everyday life. Lessons that I will never forget and try to improve on daily. Having a strong work ethic is vital in baseball. How do you expect to be good at it if you don’t work hard at it? The key to…

  • Effort Is the Secret to Success

    By Daniel Blanchard    The Strenuous Life is the name of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt in Chicago, Illinois on April 10, 1899. Based upon personal experiences, he argued that the strenuous effort and overcoming hardship were ideals to be embraced by Americans for the betterment of the nation and the world in the 20th century. Well, here we are now just beginning the 21st century and I think Teddy Roosevelt’s preaching about effort, both on the personal level and a national level are as valuable today as they were over a century ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? It’s just a fact. Things don’t get…

  • Studies Show Handwriting Improves Memory

    According to a recent study at Kent State University, the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and others, using pen and paper instead of laptops to take notes boosts memory and increases the ability to retain and understand concepts. Of course, in the past, handwriting was the only option for capturing key information. But if a pencil broke or the pen stopped working, important details could be lost. Then, along came the laptop and tablet, and taking notes seemed so much easier.But it turns out that taking notes by hand helps improve listening and cognition skills, and boosts the ability humans need to summarize information. The Journal of Psychological Science cites…