I think that what I learn simply from being in school is as important as what I learn in my classes. Throughout the semester, I have always wanted to make the most of my time here, but I have also been learning how to use time more efficiently. A few days into college, my cell phone battery died and my charger wasn’t compatible with my phone. I spent several hours during the first weekend attempting to manually connect the charger and the battery terminals to no avail. Then, my parents told me to just buy a new charger, so I ordered one on Amazon for about five dollars; I spent that money better than almost any other money I’ve spent in college because having a working phone has not only saved me time in trying to fix my charger but also made communication so much more efficient, and, consequently, I have been happier and more productive because I can text friends to meet for meals and group projects.

Such an effective quick fix like getting a working phone is what Richard Hamming, a late computer scientist, called a “small important problem,” or a problem that negatively affects many aspects of life but can be fixed easily, quickly, and cheaply. I’ve learned that it’s important to fix these as soon as possible. I can only fall asleep, for example, in a pitch-dark silent room, so after the first week of poor sleep, I started sleeping with the earplugs I brought for playing the saxophone, and later, a sleep mask, and these have markedly improved my sleep quality, and, consequently, my mood and attention. Another example: exercise. I much prefer to read in bed than I would to yoga at the gym, much less jog, but I found that the consequence of saving time by not exercising much, besides walking from class to class, was that I would spend more time fretting about how I needed to exercise more. I’ve only half-solved this problem so far, by scheduling out four five-minute exercise breaks throughout the day, but I anticipate that I will learn how to fit just enough exercise into my day to satisfy my mental quota, especially if I write a weekly schedule for next semester over winter break.

As far as what to do when I am not exercising, I have not made as much progress. I still have the problem that I had when I came to college, that there is so much that is possible to do in life that no matter what I am doing, I think that there is something that may be more worthwhile. I currently want to be a great scientist. Everything I have read and been told, though, about scientists in their youth indicates that they often pursue problems that aren’t immediately relevant to their best work—the work that made them famous. Wilhelm Röntgen, best known for discovering x-rays, spent much time measuring properties of different gases. Paul Berg, a Penn State alumnus who won a Nobel Prize for helping to create recombinant DNA, began his work on mapping metabolism. I don’t know where I will end up, and I know that I don’t have enough knowledge of what research I enjoy most, so I can’t figure out where I’ll end up just by thinking really hard about it. I need actual experience. I started working in the lab of Dr. Wang, by Biochemistry professor, but even there, I deliberate. Am I learning the skills I need to at a good pace? Is the work that I’m doing preparing me well for future research? Do I enjoy the work? Could it lead to important results? Can I get a publication? And I know that I can’t know for sure until I’ve done the research. Penn State professor Melissa Rolls began college research at Yale by culturing a seemingly inconsequential virus in some cells. But her supervisor found that she had an anomalous result: Rolls had discovered a new kind of virus replication. That discovery led to a prestigious publication and made graduate schools clamor for Rolls to matriculate at them. Thus, I have learned that since I don’t know where I will end up, it will be a better use of my time to think of ways to get experience in several areas that now interest me and pursue them until I can say with confidence that they either are or are not for me, rather than to simply imagine what my dream career would be. My uncle gave me this advice for undergraduate school: “Whatever you do, do it well.” I’ll stick with my lab, because I don’t yet know if it’s right for me. I’ll only stop working there if it ever becomes clear that it’s not.

However, my freshman seminar professor, Dr. Lüscher, said that we students may not have time to do everything well—to be perfectionists. I agree. In high school and in college, I simply found it impossible to do all of my assignments to the best of my ability—at least, if I wanted to sleep to the best of my ability as well. So I’ve learned that I need to ask the question, “How will the work I’m doing benefit me or others in the long run?” I believe that this blog entry helps me reflect on my semester and is worthwhile. But Rhetoric and Civic Life class has also taught me that despite how much I would enjoy spending a whole day gathering research for my passion blog (which I did to write the post on protein), that is simply not sustainable. In the long run, it will be more important for me to cut time on assignments where time can be cut and direct that saved time towards weightier class assignments, research, exercise, and pleasure, which I need to make good grades, get more science experience, stay healthy, and enjoy my life. So although I’m proud of my post on protein, I can’t do a post that detailed every week.

The part of Penn State that still is the most elusive, and hard to define, is to get a broad range of experiences. Not only do I desire to work in several labs throughout these years, but I also want to explore a range of leisurely activities and service organizations offered here. It seems that if something exists that college students can do, there are five clubs that do it at Penn State. I would like to explore as much as I can, but I don’t want to get overwhelmed or flounder in academics. Thus, I think the takeaway from my whole semester is this series of steps.

1. Think about what I want to learn and write it down, but don’t worry about getting it all right.
2. Set clear goals that will allow me to clearly determine whether or not I like each experience on the list.
3. Schedule out enough time to fully experience each item, and if I can’t fit them all in, then eliminate the activities I think are least important.
4. For a pre-defined length of time, like a month or a semester, follow the schedule as closely as possible. Record my experiences in a journal.
5. Determine, using reason and emotion, what I should continue and what I should abandon.
6. After the schedule time frame expires, repeat these steps with the knowledge I have learned in order to keep narrowing down which of the vast opportunities at Penn State are really for me.

How did I write a better essay about a paradigm shift while sparing myself needless stress? It turns out, I did what many successful individuals and companies have done–I had a micro paradigm shift of my own:

I used three hooks at the beginning—defying expectations (“I’m not going to talk about a paradigm shift”), making the content seem relevant (“you can use it to solve your problems”), and asking the audience the question about who wants to achieve more with less work—which I, judging by the nodding in the audience, thought worked fairly well to gain attention.

However, my speech afterward had two main faults that distracted from my message: pauses between words that were slightly too long to make the speech sound fluid, and my constant eye and head movements from one spot to another. I thought I spent too much time looking down and to my left—which would have been solved if I had focused on one particular audience member at a time. This action also may have made the audience members feel like I was talking directly to them specifically, which could have increased their attention. However, I barely registered their faces, focusing instead on the ideas I had to convey. Had I rehearsed more, or rehearsed in front of an audience, which I did not do at all, then my connection with the audience may have been sounder. Rehearsing more also would have improved my speech fluency—especially if I had practiced enough to choose beforehand exactly what words to use, instead of memorizing the ideas and speaking extemporaneously.

In addition to practicing in front of an audience, I should have practiced with my PowerPoint more than once—I actually had another slide after the Augustus Staley slide that displayed the same pattern of five boxes but had general descriptions of the content, like “Your Asset Here:” a template for the viewer to take home. But I forgot to advance the slide as I was talking about Staley, and thus the message was lost.

I did pay attention, though, as I was practicing, to coming up with some sort of catchy message for the audience to take home, mimicking how Simon Sinek in his TED Talk, “Start With Why,” repeated the message, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” So I came up with, “What are my assets?” which I think I repeated enough to successfully make my point, but just to be sure, I made it the title of my presentation.

To close my presentation, I used the TED Talk slogan, “I thought that was an idea worth spreading,” to make it seem more like a real TED Talk to me. I also thought that my ending, asking the audience what their assets were, nicely wrapped up the talk by repeating its single most important message directly to the audience. Overall, I am pleased with how my TED Talk went, but there is one more thing I wish I’d done beforehand—combed my hair.

I got to experience a paradigm shift of my own while I was writing an essay about a different paradigm shift: how trans fats went from being healthy to deadly. That was, at least, the topic I intended to write about, but it was not the topic I actually wrote about, nor will either of those topics be the subject of my TED Talk. Instead, I will talk about how people—especially those who helped popularize trans fats—have used paradigm shifts to turn their liabilities into assets, which let them bypass impossible problems by solving easier ones.

I had planned to write my essay about how trans fats were revealed to contribute to cardiovascular disease and people began to eat less of them. To articulate how the current opinions of trans fats are different from the opinions between about 1950 and 1990—the heyday of trans fats—I wanted to describe why people had favorable opinions in the first place. So I started from just before their invention and showed, step by step, why they became widespread, and six hours later, I had six pages describing the rise of trans fats and zero pages describing my actual topic. I said, “Am I going to waste the effort or use what I have done? I’m going to change my topic to why trans fats became widespread.” By looking at what I had written as an asset, not a problem, I was able to use it in my final essay.

I also know of notable individuals who helped trans fats become widespread; they too faced impossible problems, found how to turn their liabilities into assets, solved simpler problems. I will talk about how Wilhelm Normann wanted to make cheap saturated fat but couldn’t make animals grow twice as fast, so he figured out how to take what he did have—cheap cottonseed oil and Sabatier’s hydrogenation process—to make cheap saturated vegetable fat. Procter & Gamble wanted cheap tallow for candles but discovered that they could also partially hydrogenate oils. Rather than waste the technology, they started making Crisco, a very successful product, out of their partially hydrogenated fat, which was not suitable for candles. Augustus Staley, a corn farmer, had land after World War II but no market for corn. Rather than go broke, he used that land to grow soybeans and became successful. Ancel Keys wanted to prove the lipid hypothesis to a crowd of skeptical scientists; he didn’t start out with strong evidence, but he had the resources to get it and the connections to the American Heart Association to spread whatever evidence he did collect, so he created the Seven Countries Study to get that evidence he didn’t have, and Keys, along with his colleagues, succeeded at making the lipid hypothesis nutritional dogma.

An Excerpt from my Essay

The reason that the artificial trans fat industry developed in the first place in the early twentieth century was primarily that trans fats proved to be an economical substitute for saturated fats, which were becoming expensive. Both the food and chemical industries demanded saturated fats, which, in addition to being ingredients in food, were important constituents of soaps, candles, cosmetics, and greases, and they were involved in manufacturing rubber, pharmaceuticals, and sundry other industrial products (Kenyon, Stingley, and Young 213). Demand for these products increased during the Industrial Revolution, as increasingly mechanized factories required more lubricating grease from saturated fats (Schleifer 100). Animal products—tallow and lard—were the chief sources of saturated fats (Kenyon, Stingley, and Young 202; Hasenhuetti 809). However, as people moved from farms to factories, the supply of milk dwindled, resulting in a shortage of butter—a saturated fat. That Napoleon commissioned the chemist Mege Mouries to create a butter substitute even while France was in an economic depression shows the value of an alternative source of butter, a saturated fat (Lannes and Ignácio 74). Though Mouries succeeded in 1869, creating his substitute—margarine—out of beef tallow, water, and milk flavoring, diverting beef tallow from its traditional applications to make margarine caused a general shortage of saturated fats (Schleifer, 101; Lannes and Ignácio 74). Thus the search was on for cheaper substitutes for expensive animal-derived saturated fats, for both industry and cooking.

The many initial attempts failed to become popular because they only half-eliminated animal fats, producing substitutes known as “compound lards.” Between 1871 and 1893, several scientists—Henry Bradley, N. K. Fairbanks, and Swift, in that order—created them by blending beef or pork fats with cottonseed oil (Schleifer 100-01).

Discoveries by two chemists—Paul Sabatier in France and Wilhelm Normann in Garmany—solved this problem. Compared to animal fats were scarce and expensive, vegetable oils—especially cottonseed oil—were , While animal fats were too scarce, most plants that are rich in fat—such as soybeans and sunflowers—contain mostly unsaturated fats, which tend to be liquid oils at room temperature (Hasenhuetti, 2005, p. 814). The first of these scientists was another French chemist, Paul Sabatier, who discovered that a nickel catalyst could add hydrogen atoms to organic compounds, which is called hydrogenation. That Sabatier, for developing hydrogenation, shared the 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Victor Grignard shows how useful and profitable a process of making artificially hydrogenated compounds would be (“Paul Sabatier – Biographical,” 2014). Building off of Sabatier’s work, a second scientist, Wilhelm Normann, a German chemist, discovered in 1903 how to use a nickel catalyst to hydrogenate vegetable oils (Lannes & Ignácio, 2013, p. 74). During hydrogenation, hydrogen atoms gradually add to unsaturated fats, converting them into saturated fats. While complete hydrogenation yields virtually pure saturated fat, partial hydrogenation yields a mixture of products, including regular cis unsaturated fat, saturated fat, and trans fat (p. 75). Normann fully hydrogenated his vegetable oils, but the fully saturated final products were brittle and gave food an undesirable texture. He patented his process, but it was not he who commercialized hydrogenation (Schleifer, 2012, p. 101).

It took a company interested in making a profit off of artificial saturated fats to make hydrogenation widely used. In 1908, Proctor & Gamble secured the rights to use Normann’s process to hydrogenate oils in order to make artificial tallow for candles and soap. Unlike Normann, the company found success by partially hydrogenating its oils, which created soft fats similar in texture to lard. Proctor & Gamble thus realized that it could market partially hydrogenated fats as food, and it created Crisco as a substitute for butter and lard (Schleifer, 2012, p. 102).

Crisco’s success was due to two factors, predominantly: popular negative opinion of the meat-packing industry and cost. Crisco was competing against a number of so-called “compound lards,” which several scientists, including Henry Bradley in 1971, N. K. Fairbanks in 1887, and Swift in 1893, had developed by mixing beef tallow with cottonseed oil. Crisco found a niche by marketing itself as an all-vegetable lard substitute, an “Absolutely New Product, A Scientific Discovery” (Schleifer, 2012, p. 102). The public, which was concerned that animal fats were unhygienic due to the vile reputation of the meat-packing industry, favored Crisco over compound lard (p. 101). It helped that Crisco was marginally cheaper than lard and butter, though people cooking at home were not as concerned with cutting costs as strongly as commercial food manufacturers were. Still, because Crisco was putatively healthier and certainly cheaper than compound lard, people embraced it as a new cooking fat (p. 103).

Obstacles in my Essay

One problem that I am facing is that I want to make it clear that the drive behind the development of trans fat and its early popularity was due to demand for trans fats in chemical industry as well as food. However, because the paradigm shift towards abhorring trans fats has occurred in food but not in chemical industry, I will later focus on the food side of trans fats. I am wondering whether to discuss non-food factors that made trans fats economical at the beginning of the twentieth century, as these reasons were important for understanding why trans fats were developed in the first place (because the saturated fats that trans fats emulated were needed in both foods and industry), or to abandon them, because they were not part of the reason why people initially embraced trans fats specifically in food–that was due to their distrust of animal fats and compound lards, and to the slightly lower cost of artificial trans fats as compared to equivalent natural saturated fat products.

Paradigm Shifts

One paradigm shift is the rising popularity of foods with fewer or no artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, pesticides, genes, or texturizing agents. I would describe what this paradigm shift entails in more detail (including what ingredients have become most infamous, such as trans fats), analyze what events have led to this shift (such as the introduction of nutrition facts labels), why those events happened, and who made them happen, discuss scientific research that does or does not support eating more natural foods and how that research has affected popular opinion, and describe obstacles and assets for producing more all-natural food.

Another paradigm shift is the development of low-fat diets. I would discuss the emergence of diets of this type, including why they emerged and notable people who have supported them, analyze the evidence that has emerged to support or refute their benefits in different circumstances, including maximizing longevity, energy, and weight loss, and describe the effects that low-fat diets have had on our culture, including FDA dietary recommendations, habits like breakfast cereal, and commonplaces we hold.

The Common Core

What mainly inhibits fruitful discussion about education is that students, as they are being educated, develop their own goals for their education. A ninth grader may say, “I know I want to be a dentist,” but after learning about gingivitis, may say, “No, I want to study inflammatory diseases.” And within that field, indeed, in any field, there are an unlimited number of roles that that student can eventually perform. Additionally, that student may continue on to invent a novel field for which there is no set preparatory curriculum. No one knows exactly what any student needs to know for the future, so when students, teachers, and those who designed the Common Core argue about what skills and facts should be taught, the reason that they cannot invent satisfying answers is that the answers are only known after the students stop using their education.

The way David Hutchinson portrays the Common Core as a set of standards that are being implemented while they are still under construction echoes how students’ educational goals themselves change as they learn more. However, while students hopefully shape their goals based on their interests, which probably last for long periods of time, the Common Core standards are founded on unproven or specious principles—such that all students need a certain set of skills, that a standardized test can measure creative skills, and that student performance can measure teacher ability—and the standards are rapidly being changed without referring enough to evidence or the inputs of teachers or students. The Common Core, if based on solid evidence, might work, but its standards mean nothing without supporting evidence.

“I’m whole-grain!” “I provide 100% daily value of eleven vitamins and minerals!” “Mom, can we get this one, please!” Cereal box covers are in their own category of advertisements. Lined up on the shelf, under shoppers’ scrutiny, they squabble for attention. Some cereals, like Froot Loops and Reese’s Puffs, appeal to customers’ sweet teeth, or to their children’s; sugary cereals like these are designed for flavor, and they come in vibrant packages that prominently showcase their products. The “healthy” cereals, however, must use different strategies. Without sugary appeal, and without time to persuade customers about what is actually healthy, they predict what nutritional information customers believe makes cereal healthy, and then they boast about it. Kellogg’s Special K Red Berries cereal falls squarely in this latter category. After capturing shoppers’ attention, it attempts to convince them that it is the best cereal on the shelf by fulfilling the expectations its target audience has about what makes a cereal healthy. Its choice of which expectations to promote insinuates that shoppers need to buy it to be well-off.

Kellogg’s produces many cereal varieties because it tailors each one to a target audience. The main message of the advertisement for Special K Red Berries is, “Eat me and lose weight for summer.” Given that the model in this ad is female, the target audience includes women who are overweight and women who are happy with their weight but do not want to gain any more. Men may also buy this cereal, but because getting in beach body shape stereotypically involves men building muscle and women slimming down, the message of weight loss linked to beach bodies would not be as effective for men. Parents who are searching for healthy cereals for their children would probably not be attracted to this cereal unless they feared their children should lose weight, as typically, parents want their children to be gaining weight. Since this ad mentions losing weight by summer, the ideal time for this ad is in the spring. This advertisement is most effective, then, for women who, in the spring, think they overweight or have a healthy weight.

As its target customers cursorily glance at cereal boxes, this ad does not have time to convince them of anything besides that they should buy Special K. Because this cereal is designed for health- or weight-conscious people, to create an effective message, Kellogg’s considered what expectations its target shoppers would have about what makes cereal healthy. First of all, by setting foot in the cereal aisle, shoppers show that they think that cereal is a healthy breakfast food. Since cereals tend to be high in carbohydrates and low in fat, Kellogg’s assumed that shoppers would think that a low-fat cereal is healthy. Additionally, it assumed that its health-conscious audience would be aware of the commonplace health axioms that being healthy means being thin, that low-fat foods make people lose fat, and that sodium is unhealthy.

Having considered what shoppers deem healthy, Kellogg’s next determined how to attract their attention. The ad has to go on the cereal box itself; only there, in competition with other cereals, not on the distant television screen or magazine, can the ad sway a shopper away from the appealing cereal next to it on the shelf. It must first catch the eye before shoppers will see the healthy details; this the ad does by using red—a look-at-me color—on the brand name, the logo, the picture of the cereal, and the bikini. The next feature shoppers notice is the prominent K logo, which reminds them that a credible brand—Kellogg’s—made this cereal. Though tan is not a vivid color like red, shoppers are next drawn to the woman’s torso because it is anthropomorphic, and they read the words “Get a Slimmer Waist,” themselves curved, written on the torso. “This summer,” written underneath, gives that weight-loss goal a deadline, and therefore, incentive to stop hesitating and buy the cereal. At this point, target shoppers, who are concerned with their weight, will pay attention to the finer details. Unlike in Froot Loops or Reese’s Puffs ads, where the sugary cereal takes center stage, Special K quarantines it to the side (with, non-coincidentally, a curve that resembles a waist) because the health information is more important than if the cereal’s image makes shoppers salivate. “Less than 2% fat” is written above to appeal to shoppers’ desire for low-fat foods, and the low amounts of both fat and saturated fat are written again at the top of the ad. Next to the fat content, the ad, instead of saying, “Sodium,” which is an unhealthy word, prints the “Salt” content and converts it to grams, because 0.6 grams sounds like less than six hundred milligrams, even though the quantities are equivalent. Shoppers pay attention to this ad because it draws interest and appeals to health axioms.

This ad, however, fails to mention some nutritional claims that, being present on other cereals, could divert shoppers’ attention elsewhere. In particular, this Special K is not “100% Whole Grain,” while even Froot Loops and Reese’s Puffs boast about their whole grain content. The term “red berries” connotes how processed Special K is, which is off-putting; naming specific berries would make the cereal seem more natural, and thus more appealing. Nowhere does this ad boast Special K’s vitamin, mineral, or fiber content, nor does it use the buzzwords fortified, natural, multigrain, high-protein, or even toasted. Other cereals that do could persuade shoppers who are not concerned with losing weight to buy them instead.

Being uncluttered with buzzwords, however, the ad can clearly state that it will make shoppers lose weight. With that message, this ad insinuates deeper incentives to buy the cereal than simply, “Get a Slimmer Waist.” As the bikini indicates, this ad implies that going to the beach or the pool are important summer activities in American culture. It says that this summer, people will judge the shoppers’ bodies based on the sole judging criteria of how thin the shoppers are. (Nothing else matters, of course—the ad implies that all that is important about a woman is her torso.) When the ad communicates these messages, shoppers feel that they need to do something to ensure that they will not be harshly judged in the upcoming summer. In the spring, shoppers feel a sense of urgency. But to assuage worried shoppers’ fears, the ad implies that losing weight can be a quick and easy process—that shoppers can make great progress in only two weeks if they simply buy Special K and follow the diet. The ad’s overt message is that the easiest way for overweight shoppers to look acceptable is to eat Special K; the values that underpin it are more subtle.

There is much depth even in cereal box ads because eating breakfast cereal has become a common American tradition. Cereals thus imbue a set of values—mainly that low-fat foods are healthy, as cereals tend to be high in carbohydrates—and they in turn attract shoppers who agree with those values. But to stand out among its competitors, a cereal has to do more: it has to convince its target audience that it is the healthiest cereal on the shelf. The ad for Special K Red Berries convinces shoppers to buy it not only by matching many of their expectations about what a healthy cereal should look like but also by painting an image in their minds of what a healthy person should look like. Then, it simply claims that by eating the cereal, shoppers will achieve their dreams of being healthier. Healthier, though, means how the ad defines healthier, which means thinner. An ad for a cereal is insinuating the definition of health.

Works Cited

Cacolantern. “SpecialKBox.” Photograph. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Aug. 2007. Web. 2 Oct. 2014.

Did I get your attention? Memorable speeches have attention-grabbing first lines.

Lines that interest us sound unusual; they say, “I’m different. Pay attention!” I remember two of the first lines of our speeches. “Let’s talk about blood,” by Kass, is the first. Kass introduced a familiar subject—a blood drive—with a unique and succinct first line. Unique things are memorable; succinct things are easy to remember. Her introduction was thus more effective than “The civic artifact that I chose for this speech is the blood drive.” Then the blood drive would have just been your average blood drive.

The other line that I remember was longer, so I can only paraphrase it: “Have you ever traveled to a different country where you knew no one, relinquishing everything you had yet lived for?” by Kaylee. While Kass introduced uniquely a familiar topic, Kaylee introduced an experience few of us can relate to: emigration. Instead of saying, “The person I interviewed emigrated to the United States,” Kaylee asked us if we have ever experienced the hardships of emigration. Not only did Kaylee give specific hardships in her introduction (tangible facts are more memorable than abstract overviews), but she also asked us if we’d ever experienced them, which made us think about each hardship, whether it had happened to us, and what it must be like. Emigration is unusual to most of us, and more so if, like Kaylee did, a speaker reminds us how unfamiliar it is.

An engaging introduction before a dull speech, however, fails. And just as a familiar topic like a blood drive can have a unique introduction, a unique topic can be discussed in a dull manner. When some of us were delivering, we seemed to me to be talking to a crowd of marble statues; we said, “Here is my script, I’ll recite it.” Most of us made consistent eye contact—we weren’t reading a script verbatim—but spoke with a tone we’d use to read a paragraph of a book, not one that we’d use in conversation. And which is more engaging: a lecture or a conversation? Simply practicing sounding more fluid and less rigid in speech, like we would be in an actual conversation, will help us all be engaging. Our audiences will think not, “The speaker is talking,” but instead, “The speaker is talking to me. I will remember the speech.” And I hope that by using first and second person, I have assured you that I am writing for you, not at you.

American students, Ifemelu observes, are more concerned with their facades than with their minds. They use phrases that avoid disclosing when they don’t know something, speak when they have nothing to say, and exaggerate to dullness. I agree, mostly, with Ifemelu. I think that the cause behind American students’ eagerness to look good is that American students tend to be needy for others to appreciate them; they overly friendly, and they are afraid to admit their faults or offend others because then the people whom they offend may dislike them. Instead of saying “sorry” when another befalls a minor misfortune, an American students says, “Are you okay?” because they know that the misfortunate other will want to please them by saying “Yeah, I’m fine; I only tripped down the staircase and twisted my ankle,” which will make the problem seem smaller, make both persons involved more relieved at the smallness of the problem, and endear the misfortunate person with the other person who cared so much about them to go through the effort of asking, “Are you okay?”

The classmates with whom I like to socialize are not superficial, and I have fortunately met some people who are not, although having homework and classes tends to make my conversations more superficial. Instead of being able to talk with someone for thirty minutes when we need to talk for thirty minutes, I talk superficially for three because I have a class to get to in ten minutes. Instead of talking about our aspirations and fears, it is much easier—and much more comfortable—to talk about the homework assignment or the upcoming test, and so we do. Moreover, being reluctant to make others feel uncomfortable, we American students do not tend to ask each other about our inchoate ambitions (we don’t like to admit that we don’t have definite plans for our futures) or our fears (we don’t want to think about how we might fail). Ifemelu’s observation at the end of the passage that American students seem to have their lives on track is a misinterpretation, I must say. She forgets that under their polished facades, American students are people with insecurities, faults, and painful secrets, but who have trouble fixing their problems because they are afraid to tarnish their reputations.

How do you make an audience trust you from the inception of your speech? Entrust your audience with your most upsetting memory. Your listeners will be impressed with your candor, as I was impressed with how Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist, described what happens in the mind during a massive stroke—her own stroke.

Her speech, “My Stroke of Insight,” is one of the most viewed TED Talks, and for good reason. First, there is the ironic uniqueness. To paraphrase her, how rare is it that a neuroscientist gets to observe a stroke firsthand? Dr. Taylor can connect her internal experience to her deep knowledge of how the brain functions, which makes her story credible.

She uses images and imagery to further support her speech. For her first argument—that the two hemispheres of the brain have separated personalities—she holds up a real human brain—its spinal cord swaying beneath—and gently pulls apart the right and left hemispheres. Who would not be engaged after that? On the display screen, Dr. Taylor shows relevant pictures of herself with her family to show people whom she loves and who love her, which makes the audience sympathetic.

Dr. Taylor, with words as well, paints in her listeners’ minds what being unable to think is like. Saying “I couldn’t read” is vague; saying that she tried to read the numbers on her telephone to dial for help, but that all she saw was an array of pixels, black and white, and she couldn’t distinguish them or put them together into what we recognize immediately as numerals—that is much more vivid, and it is engaging. “Energy” is how Dr. Taylor describes her world; she and everything else were one, one giant, homogenous being of energy.

Being an energy being, Dr. Taylor said, was beautiful. She draws her words out when she talks about how relaxing it was to be made of energy and one with the now. Her astringent nasal tone, however, reminds the audience how painfully close to death she came. Towards the conclusion, she holds back tears—a combination of tears of terror, relief, and joy—that stir the audience’s emotions as well and stick the speech in their memories with a needle. Dr. Taylor was shaken, of course, but also joyful because she found that during her stroke, she experienced pure bliss, and she floats that anyone, even without having a stroke, can learn how to quell anxieties and attain peace, and make the world peaceful. The world can improve—people can improve, she promises. She is the proof—she, who lost language and thought, who spent eight years relearning how to live, who just stood up and spoke about her stroke of insight—she is the living proof the audience will remember.

“I volunteer through my church,” my friends have told me. Churches—places where people of like minds meet—are hubs for organizing events that serve the community. But what if facilitating the formation of community service groups is not the primary way in which churches benefit their communities?

At the beginning of Chimamanda Adichie’s novel Americanah, the mother of Ifemelu—the protagonist—attends St. Dominic’s—a Catholic church in Nigeria—and decorates her home with crucifixes and rosaries. She crosses herself before meals and prays often. Yet her ties to St. Dominic’s are tenuous; when an acquaintance tells her about the Revival Saints, Ifemelu’s mother says she has found Christ, then cuts off her flowing hair, becomes austere in celebration, and fasts herself halfway to starvation.

She is not long with that church, either. An angel she sees convinces her to join the Miracle Spring, and soon after, another tells her to attend the Guiding Assembly, where, overcome with joy, she cries. In the Guiding Assembly, she stops fasting and starts fervently celebrating during the services: “[My catarrh] is gone. Praise God!” (page 53), she says at the front of a long line of people who are joyful because of the little problems He has resolved. Ifemelu’s mother has found a religious home.

Nowhere does Adichie mention community service through church; Ifemelu suspects the collection plates defray the pastor’s nice house and cars. Instead, churches in Americanah serve the other purpose of making their members religiously fulfilled for the price of their members’ donations. Ifemelu’s mother is passionate, but not committed to any church, so she could not commit to any community service groups. Instead, she searches around for churches that make her feel pious, doing whatever they tell her to do, desperate to get fulfillment from religion. Her husband and daughter are agnostic, but they are happy when she is happy with her church. Maintaining the stability of their members’ families and the contentment of their members’ souls is the paramount civic service of churches in Americanah.