I recently started writing a book about helping students find intrinsic motivation in the pursuit of academic success.
I’ve gotten very varied responses from the people I’ve talked to about this project. Most people have expressed a lot of doubt, asked some questions, and given no encouragement. I recognize that this is completely average behavior (but [...]

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
After reading this post by my brother on excellence, I thought of a common problem faced by people who get serious about goal-setting: others think they are “weird” or “lame” or “ridiculous” or “overly ambitious” for putting their goals [...]

Yesterday, I gave a presentation on goal-setting to our students. Goal-setting is something I started practicing three years ago, and it has helped me gain a lot of clarity in determining what is truly important to me and in knowing exactly what kind of person I want to be.
You’ll have to become a bigger person in [...]

Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked to many seniors at Duke about what they are doing post-graduation. Most of them have either secured jobs or places in grad school, but there are a good number who don’t have any concrete plans. The latter group seems pretty worried. “I feel really behind,” “I just really [...]

How are your New Year’s resolutions coming along?
I guess it’s a pretty good time to ask that question, because at this time of the year you are probably either making good progress, or you’ve given up on them.
I had a chat with a friend about his resolutions (most of which are related to his passion [...]

Over the last few weeks, many Duke students have been in a frenzy updating their resumes and applying for summer internships. Investment banking and consulting seem to be the hot favorites.
According to the Duke Career Center, the top two hiring industries for 2009 Duke graduates are financial services (26 percent) and consulting (19 percent), and [...]

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to a group of international students at Duke about academic integrity. I gave the talk on behalf of the Honor Council, which is an organization that promotes the Duke honor code.
The academic culture in the US is pretty different from many other countries– it’s very different from Singapore, [...]

I saw this equation on my friend’s blog a while ago. She was going through a rough time in her life and she was pretty depressed, mainly because people had let her down.
She fully believed this equation to be true. She thought that her expectations of people and of life were too high– the denominator [...]

There are so many things I want to do– things that will help me enjoy better relationships, become a better communicator, become more creative, contribute more to the community, increase my general knowledge, and more.
But these good intentions did not often turn into action– and we all know that action is the key to achieving [...]