Education
« The brain isn't a mystery. It follows rules you can understand. »
A student has been stuck on a concept for twenty minutes. Rather than raising a hand toward the teacher, they turn to the classmate next to them. Three sentences later, they finally understand. This reflex, often seen as a fallback, a second-best solution when the teacher is busy elsewhere, is in fact one of the […]
A student gets an excellent grade on a test she was dreading. Instead of the expected relief, a thought imposes itself almost instantly: the topic happened to suit her, the marker was lenient, she got lucky. Success, instead of reassuring her, immediately reignites the doubt. This mechanism has a name, impostor syndrome, and it particularly […]
For twenty minutes, this student seems elsewhere. Eyes unfocused, pen still, no visible trace of concentration on the exercise at hand. Then, on a following exercise that suddenly grabs their interest, they become hyper-focused, productive, nearly impossible to distract. This contrast often confuses the adults around them, who read it as selective bad will. It […]
An adult, ten or fifteen years after their last diploma, hesitates in front of an enrollment form for a training program. It is not the program that stops them, nor even the cost of the classes. It is a small voice repeating that it is too late, that they have lost their touch, that they […]
In the late 1980s, a student in Rome could not get himself to work. It was neither a lack of intelligence nor a lack of will to succeed, it was that very specific paralysis in front of material that needed absorbing, which pushes you to do absolutely anything else instead. Rather than a vague resolution […]
