Climbers prepare in very different ways. In his book Adapt, coach Kris Hampton describes four approaches: For Nothing, For Everything, For Something, and For Anything. The more I thought about it, the more I realized: these don’t just describe climbing. They describe learning, too. And […]
Category: For Learners
A Radical Approach to Time Management
Disclaimer: this may be the most dangerous post I’ve ever written. If you misread it, you may think I am suggesting you should “phone it in” as a student. If my employers misread it, they may think I’m “phoning it in at work.” Both are […]
Feeling Lost? Good. That’s the Point.
Why education is about learning to get unstuck, not about knowing it all The Desert Drop-Off Imagine being blindfolded, driven for hours, and dropped in the middle of the desert. You take off the blindfold, and the horizon stretches endlessly in every direction. No map. […]
Settling In: Finding Your Real Routine
For Students: Iteration Over Perfection When Plans Meet Reality Picture this: you sit down on Tuesday night, determined to get through your homework. You clear the desk, open your laptop, and start working. An hour later, you’ve stared at the same problem for twenty minutes, […]
First Friday: Starting the Semester You Want
The Mirror of Stress I’ve realized something after years on both sides of the classroom. For faculty, the most stressful day of the semester is Day 1. We set the systems and policies that everyone will live with for sixteen weeks — and we make […]
The Week Before: A Calm, Confident Launch
The Week That Feels… Strange This week always feels strange, doesn’t it? Summer has its own rhythm: slow mornings, flexible days, deciding what to do as you go. Then suddenly, the semester is here—and life doesn’t fit the same way anymore. It’s like parking on […]
Declutter Your Mental Backpack
It’s two weeks until summer break ends and fall semester 2025 begins! The Hidden Weight of Week -2 In the weeks before classes start, everything looks quiet on the surface—but inside, students and faculty are already carrying weight. Not textbooks. Not laptops. The mental backpack. […]
Pulling at New Threads
If you scroll back far enough, you can still find my first post here at TonyFerrar.com (here’s a link if you’d rather have a shortcut). In August, 2016 my life was quite a bit different than it is today. I enjoyed those days, the start […]
