… and the lessons I learned at each.
Lessons Learned at Duke: The importance of learning by listening, participating, and reading, the critical role of emotional bank accounts in developing student-faculty relationships (learned from the teaching nun), and the value of story telling in education (learned from Shep).
Lessons Learned at Oxford: What it’s like to be the dumbest guy in the place, and how to read critically and write convincingly.
Lessons Learned at Georgia Tech: How to teach effectively and run a research lab productively, one way to write a textbook, and the importance of fit when choosing an academic home.
Lessons Learned at Lafayette: The many lessons I learned from students and colleagues at Lafayette over my 34 years there are the subject of the bulk of the book. Just to foreshadow, I learned why the answer is always false, that people and core values are more important than rules, how to deal with Professor Canard Quidnunc, why Break Stuff Day is the best day of the semester, the power of the question Why?, and how lucky I was to be able to spend so much time with some of the finest students in the land.
Before you leave this page I want to give you the opportunity to re-experience your youthful joy when learning it was time for a pop quiz. Ready? [Hint: There are eight questions, two of which are associated with each of the four schools mentioned above.]
Multiple Choice Quiz
If you thought that quiz was tough, don’t worry. The other quizzes on this website all have a true or false format. To help you prepare for those, check out the title of the book!