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Bégaudeau asks the students to think about what they have learned and write down one thing to take away from the class, one concept, text, or idea that might have made a dif f erence. Th e class disperses, and one girl shuf f l es up to the front. Th e teacher looks at her expectantly and draws out her comment. “I didn’t learn anything,” she tells him without malice or anger, “nothing. . . . I can’t think of anything I learned.” Th e moment is a defeat for the teacher and a disappointment for the viewer, who wants to believe in a narrative of educational uplift, but it is a triumph for alternative pedagogies because it reminds us that learning is a two- way street and you cannot teach without a dialogic re-lation to the learner.

— The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam

I never wanted to blog before. I’ve never liked the word blog—I suppose it is meant to stand for bio-log or something like that, but it sounds like a sodden tree trunk in a bog, or maybe an obstruction in the nasal passage (Oh, she talks that way because she has such terrible blogs in her nose). I was also put off by the idea that a blog ought to be “interactive,” that the blogger is expected to read people’s comments in order to reply to them and carry on a limitless conversation with strangers. I am much too introverted to want to do that at all. I am happy with strangers only if I can write a story or a poem and hide from them behind it, letting it speak for me.

— No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin

I think about cats and their adorable murderous ways. I think about the troubled human/other interface. Somewhere inside us, I think, we all carry the Mowgli dream—that the other animals will see and accept us as one among them. And then we fail this dream when the wrong animals ask it of us. We think we wish to join the wild animals in the jungle but will not tolerate the wild animals in our kitchens. There are too many ants, we think, reaching for the spray, when it is equally true that there are too many humans.

— No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin

You’ll need to pay attention to your emotions and work backward. Notice shifts in your emotions, like a dramatic surge in self-doubt. Then ask yourself what has happened recently that might’ve triggered that emotional shift, and then hunt for thinking errors.

— Stress-Free Productivity by Alice Boyes

What you label as procrastination might be your overestimating how long it’s possible for you to focus intensely in a day. Your “procrastination” problem might actually be having unrealistic expectations of yourself.

— Stress-Free Productivity by Alice Boyes