In Star Wars, there is always that scene of the one little, very important ship soaring off into space (when the audience is lucky, this mission is narrated by a robot with an extreme knack for sarcasm). Alone, it launches out into this network of stars and asteroids and, maybe, comes back having mapped out one more mission’s worth of discoveries about the galaxies.
While I am (unfortunately) not a space-cavorting commander, I do have that same sensation of being afloat in the wilderness every morning when I open my emails, Twitter stream, or journalistic digests. Faced with so much to explore around me, I grasp at what I can, and sometimes, I get lucky and stumble across something really extraordinary.
Here are a few links that made me think (forgive the rhyme) this week. They were worth all of the moments exchanged to read them.
“What Are You Going to Do With That?” a speech delivered by William Deresiewicz to the freshman class at Stanford University. College, jobs, the pressure to “get into” something…this speech puts a magnifying glass on what we work for, and then asks us if that’s what we want, after all. Click here to read it.
Adopt a Word — a project by the Oxford English Dictionary that is as endearing as it sounds. Go, logophiles, go!! (Also, could someone please consider this for my Chrismakkah stocking? Just saying.) Click here to check it out in all of its splendor.
“Speaking out on the problems within,” a Yale Herald article by Julia Lurie. Brave and eloquent, this article looks at the times when your flippant answer of “Nothing much, and good!” to “What’s up? How are you?” is false. Click here to read.
Wanderfly. Do you tend to organize your vacations by saying, “I want to go somewhere cool at some point over the course of my seven days off?” Me, too. (My mom, on the other hand, begins her vacation planning by sending us all emails saying, “We’re going on vacation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The exclamation points correspond roughly to the amount of hours that she will spend researching our destination.) Well, wanderfly is your answer, and my new favorite travel-daydreaming website. Check it out by clicking here.
The OpEd Project. I’ve known about this website for a while, but I visited it again to see how election coverage went. No, it’s not a political news site. It’s a project to get more female writers on the op-ed pages of the nation’s most-read and most-respected papers. One of those problems you may not have known existed, but that you should learn more about RIGHT NOW. Click here to check it out.
“Truth Lies Here,” an article in The Atlantic by Michael Hirschorn. The Internet may have given us more opportunities to share our voices. But how can we be sure that what we’re hearing isn’t just our own echo? Click here to read.
Yes, brain, I know you are stuffed-to-the-brim with food for thought, so I will end here. But if you have your own websites, articles, musings, or words for adoption for the week, send them along. Awkward Star Wars intros and all.
Jess On A Whim 