Opinion

This past Labor Day was one of the loveliest weekends I’ve spent, not because we went anywhere, but because I didn’t spend the time frantically finishing multiple syllabi and dreading the impending semester and the end of my ‘real’ work. As an administrator, I’ve been working all summer and my teaching duties are minimal, so the semester’s start does not radically alter my schedule or workload. But it was the end of the summer for our eight-year old daughter and she alternated between excitement and loss.

And why that's a good thing.

I remember that, as a child, I loved to copy in a notebook the best parts of the literature I was reading. I would taste the words in my mouth as I was transferring them from the page of the book and jotting them on my little pad, thus enjoying them even more. I must admit that secretly, I wished it were I who authored those pretty phrases, I who had found those brilliant and unexpected pairings between adjectives and nouns. But even if I was just the scribe taking down the notes of the divine inspiration of others, the activity of repeating the path of their pen was pleasurable and, later on, inspirational.

As I was prepping for teaching the first session of Strategic Management and thinking of words to explain to students how the case discussion process works, it dawned on me just how much a good case discussion is like setting strategy. In short, both are team sports, involve a lot of information, require fresh perspectives and open dialogue – and are, at times, messy processes.

Lolo Jones and the Harvard Cheating Scandal

Graduate students and new faculty members need to know more about how compensation works, writes Nate Kreuter.

A few months ago, Dahlia Lithwick had a charming piece in Slate about two kinds of Muppets: Order Muppets and Chaos Muppets. She suggested that most people fall into one of the two camps. The Order Muppets -- Kermit, Bert, Scooter, Sam the Eagle -- are concerned with keeping the show running. The Chaos Muppets -- Cookie Monster, Ernie, Gonzo, Animal -- are a bit more, well, demonstrative. They bring energy, and entropy.