HealthyGamerGG - Education in the US, Studying, and Reddit Review | Community Stream

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

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get that stuff together. So I'd like to make a case to you guys today that, you know, like why the education system in the U.S. is busted. And also, like, thoughts on how to fix it. A couple of thoughts. One is that y'all can donate directly to our nonprofit. All of our donations on stream this month go directly to our nonprofit, which subsidizes services for people who can't afford them at Healthy Gamer. goes to our subsidy fund, which is, you know, someone's in coaching and they can't afford it or for them to continue if they're having productive coaching or for people who can't afford it. The other thing that our nonprofit really does is fund research.

So we've got a lot of cool research studies going on that I think that understandably, you know, the NIH is not so interested in right now. So I think right now, you know, the world is focused on COVID. I also saw that Hawaii, I think, had the highest number of overdoses, like in its history, like last month. So I think that, you know, opioid addiction and things like that are a real problem. I've spoken with people like, you know, like policymakers as well as folks like in the American Psychiatric Association about things like porn addiction, technology addiction, social media addiction, video game addiction. And the answer that I get, which is pretty understandable, is, yeah, we're trying to focus on, like, this opioid epidemic, which is fine. But we still think that there's a lot of research which benefits our community, which is really important. And that's what we want to kind of do.

So all of our donations go to support those two things. One thing to note, so our coaching program is absolutely full. So we're going to start training, hopefully new coaches, applications are open. Um, and it's been full for a little while. We tend to get a few. Oh, love raid. Do we get a raid? Okay.

Um, so, yeah, so coaching program is full. I, I think generally speaking, you know, a couple spots open up every day. Um, I think there should be a wait list, but just if anyone's wondering if you guys have signed up for coaching and you haven't, you know, haven't gotten in, that's probably why. Um, so hopefully we'll be able to manage that down the road with, uh, another set of coaches. So let's get started with the educational rant. Okay? So here's what I'd like to do.

I'd like to share with you guys kind of a, oh, let me see if I can. No, let's keep. Okay. So this is what we're going to do. I'm going to try to make a case for you guys about why I think the educational system is busted and what we should do to fix it. So to begin with, if we want to understand like why something is broken, so this is a big part of what we do at Healthy Gamer. We have to start with understanding how it got to be this way. So one thing that I really love about an education and sort of science and medicine

is that it gives you a lot of like really cool principles that you can use to like analyze different things in life. So I think what we're going to do to sort of look at at the educational system in one lens to try to understand it is actually evolutionary biology in like the theory of evolution and natural selection. And I think that's a very good theory for understanding the education system because, you know, evolutionary pressures, I think if you kind of think about the education system in terms of evolutionary pressures, you'll begin to see how it got to where it is and why it's as busted as it is. To start off, we're going to explain a little bit about evolution and natural selection. So remember that evolution happens through natural selection.

And natural selection is when there's some kind of pressure on a system that causes us to select for particular things. And I basically think that our education system is the way that it is because it doesn't have the appropriate selection pressures. So one of the key terms that I'm going to introduce today is vestigial. So vestigial is an evolutionary term that refers to like something that we have that has outlived its usefulness. So a good example of like a vestigial organ is the appendix. So probably, you know, millions of years ago, if we had a GI illness, we would get kind of like all of our healthy bacteria washed out. And so we have this tiny little organ called the appendix. And what people believe that the appendix used to be for is sort of a

storehouse of your good bacteria. So after a GI illness, that appendix would kind of repopulate, like bacteria would come out of the appendix and repopulate your GI system with healthy bacteria. As it turns out, that's not really something we need anymore because of something about our diet and our lifestyle and things like that, we don't really need the storehouse of bugs from our appendix, which makes the appendix basically a vestigial organ, which means we don't need it anymore. Which in turn means that if you get appendicitis and your appendix gets inflamed, like a surgeon will just remove it and then you'll be completely fine without an appendix. And so I think that there are a lot of things in our educational system, like

massive lectures in the way that we pay professors to teach us that are essentially vestigial. They're like, they're relics of a time long ago when things used to be important. So let's try to understand like how education got to be where it is. So like back in the day, we can start with someone like Socrates, right? Socrates would like get into a room with a group of people and he would have students and he'd like engage with them individually. And so like people would ask questions or he'd ask them questions. they'd like sit there and like you'd had you had to learn from Socrates.

Depending on where you were, you would have to sort of like learn from a particular person. And that's how we transmitted knowledge from like one person to another or one generation to another, right? It was through directed dissemination. And then what happened is as we sort of started to advance in learning and things like that as we started to develop like, you know, science and things like that, we started to discover that like in order to advance science, what you had to do is learn all of the existing science and then like take over where like the leaders in the field left off. So if you think about the advancement of like, let's say physics or biology or chemistry,

you'd have someone who like understood everything about chemistry that humanity had understood so far. And then if you wanted to like advance the system of chemistry, you'd go learn everything that the leader in the field knew and then you could perform further experiments, Right? So we see this a lot in like the advancement of physics where you have these people like, you know, Tesla and Newton and, you know, a bunch of different people who like understood the extent of what we knew in a field. And then people would come to them, study with these people like Isaac Newton. They would, you know, they would learn everything that we understood about physics or mathematics.

And then they would go on to extend the field in some way. So what essentially happened was like essentially like your best teachers were also researchers because back then there was like it was very hard to disseminate knowledge or advance the field without being a researcher yourself. So if you wanted to learn the most physics, you essentially had to go to researchers. And so this is where sort of the college system developed because there's like one big problem with colleges, which is that like research and education tend to get tangled together. So if you look at current colleges, how does someone become a professor in college? It actually has

very little to do with their teaching capability. So like the jobs of most professors is not to teach. It's actually to do research. And if you want to advance in the field of like, you know, academic whatever, it essentially comes down to research funding and the amount of like grants and stuff that you produce. So now you're a college and like what you've done is you've sort of selected for a group of people who are like advancing in their field, which makes perfect sense. But I think now what's happened is society has evolved a little bit to where we have a bunch of professions. Like the majority of people who go to college do not enter academia. Whereas if you think about like, you know, a thousand years ago, that wasn't the case. Right. Like most people who went to academic institutions, the reason

they went to academic institutions was to become researchers. But the goal of college has changed. it's actually not to advance the field. It's actually to learn like a basic foundation of skills so that you can be, you know, productive in some way. So it's kind of interesting because we still have the system in college that essentially promotes and prioritizes like not teaching, which is the primary goal of college now. Right? So the primary goal of college is no longer to advance research.

I mean, you can make that argument. But I'd say that, you know, at least for students who are going, like, you know, colleges will have hundreds or thousands. of students, I think most of those students are there to learn a basic level of information as opposed to advance their field in an academic way. But what we see in colleges is that essentially still, whether you teach or not, has very little to do with your teaching ability and has a lot to do with your research ability, your grant writing capability, your publishing capability. and so we're starting to see sort of this interesting, like, evolutionary, like vestigial relic of the past,

where it sort of made sense that professors had to be researchers before, but most professors, like most of the people that teach you, like their goal is to teach you, it's not actually to advance the field. So I think the biggest problem is that, you know, there's actually no system of feedback for, like, education. There's no like evolutionary pressure against crappy teachers or a crappy educational system. And so if we kind of think about it, like if you have a bad experience in a class, like let's say you've got a mediocre teacher and you, like, what are you going to say to your college? Are you going to say like, hey, this guy isn't great at teaching or this woman isn't great at teaching? And then what's the college you're going to do? Like all they're going to care about

is whether, you know, the teacher is bringing, like, publishing and whether they're like bringing in research dollars because the university gets a cut. Like they have no. They have no evolutionary pressure because there's no like, you know, if you walk into a restaurant and you're unhappy with your meal, you have some degree of like control over like your dollar, right? You can ask for a refund, you can post a review on Yelp, you can take your business elsewhere. But if you look at the college system, there's essentially no evolutionary pressure to actually improve education. Because if you're a freshman at a college and you dislike two of your professors, if they do a bad job at actually teaching you, what are your options?

You can't, I mean, you can theoretically you can transfer, like maybe at the end of freshman year, but that's like very, very difficult, right? If you're like two years into a college or three years into a college, so if you have like an advanced professor and you're three years into your degree and your professor does a crappy job of teaching, what are your options? You essentially have none. If you go to your college administration and you say that this person is not very good at teaching, that's not going to do anything.

Like there's going to be no system of feedback. So it's really bizarre because you can't get a refund if you're dissatisfied. You can't, like, you can provide feedback, but there's no, like, pressure on the college to actually respond. Because if they replace their star researcher who brings in, like, you know, a million dollars in grants, and then, like, if they replace it with a brilliant teacher who brings in half the money in grants, or even a quarter of the money in grants, how is the college's financial situation different? They're getting tuition from you either way, right?

Because it's not like you can go to college for three years in one place and easily transfer your credits. So the whole promotion structure, the whole reinforcement structure, like the evolutionary pressures on a college system, are not actually designed to improve education at all. Because basically, like all colleges need to do is provide enough educational satisfaction to prevent you transnational, transferring to somewhere else. And transferring is such a pain in the ass to begin with that that barrier is actually like really hard to overcome. So we have a system that essentially like, you know, doesn't have any sort of like feedback that's meaningful against bad teachers. And if you look at like other industries that used to be like this, a good example was like the taxi industry, right? I don't know if you guys like before Uber and Lyft showed up, like if you took a taxi somewhere and the person was late, like what was your recourse? You had like, there wasn't, there weren't good cab companies and bad cab companies. There were bad cab companies and worse cab companies. And how does that system get created?

It's because there's no system of meaningful feedback that will cause things to change. So I call the dispatcher and I complain because my cabby is 20 minutes late. Like, what do they do? Like, how do I, as a human being get to, like, pick which cabby comes to pick me up? I don't. Right? So Uber and Lyft come along and they completely destroy the industry. and what is like the primary thing that Uber and Lyft like give you? So like it's convenience and stuff like that.

But it's also like a system of feedback where if you're like unsatisfied with the service, you can go and complain to someone. And then like that's why Uber and Lyft have become so successful because like you actually are guaranteeing a certain quality of service. So when it comes to education, what is your guarantee of quality of service? You have none. You can get a crappy professor. You can get a good professor and you guys know what I'm talking about. Like when you go to a college, there are some professors that are good. Everyone wants to be in their chemistry class. No one wants to be in these four people who teach crappy chemistry. And so, like, just think about that for a second. Why on earth would you, like, if you're an educational institution, you should not be in a situation where, like, 90% of your students want to be in 10% of the classes. You should actually have good educators all throughout,

but there's no point in having good educators all throughout because your financial bottom line is not affected at all. Because people can't, there's no refund. Like, you can't, like, go to your college and say, hey, I didn't learn calculus. Can I have my money back, please? I didn't learn calculus. I'm going to move to this other college and like take classes there. There's no system of evolutionary feedback. There's no natural selection. So this is why like colleges have evolved based on other pressures which we'll go into. So this is where like I want to just teach you guys like a quick side note. Right. So like if you look at genetic diseases, that are terminal in human beings. What you find is that like most of the genetic debilitating diseases

that happen to people happened later in life. So they happen like when you're 50, they happen when you're 60, and they happen when you're 70. And why is that? Why are there a bunch of these genetic diseases that manifest later in life as opposed to earlier in life? It's because there's been a natural selection pressure. If I get a genetic disease that causes me to pass away at the age of 10, I'm not going to pass those genes on to my kids. Even if I get a genetic disease at the age of 30, at least I'm having kids, but if I pass away at the age of 30, then the survival of my children is affected because their parent is gone. And now we look at things like cancer. Why does cancer mostly happen later in life, as opposed to earlier in life? And that's because there's

no natural selection pressure later in life. Like once I'm 65 years old and I have grandchildren, children, if I die, my child is probably going to be perfectly fine. Their child is probably also going to be perfectly fine. So we can see that when there's like, like, we can actually see in genetics and illness how like natural selection sort of selects for, you know, diseases that manifest later in life because there's no selection pressure. And so what we see essentially in our education system is a system that does not actually have any kind of. of selection pressure on the quality of education. Because if you think about it, like, if you look at like colleges, right, like how do you know which college offers a better education versus a

worse education? There's no standardized system to compare the quality of education. So then the next question is like, if we have no feedback mechanisms that actually address quality of education, if there's no like essentially punishment or reward, if someone does a better job teaching or worse job teaching, what are the driving evolutionary pressures for colleges? And it turns out that it's pretty simple and it's money. Okay. So like this is where if you look at like how colleges have evolved, like the main thing that they've been gravitating towards is like increased profitability. So if we look at like, you know, and this is a huge problem because, you know, some time ago, and this was, you know, well done, I think from a government perspective, but the U.S. government

basically guaranteed federal loans, like anyone could get a loan for college. And so essentially, like, this was kind of a step in the right direction that kind of wound us up at the wrong place, which is exactly how evolution happens, by the way, right? Because evolution is not like a conscious force. It's just a series of like RNG outcomes that result in a particular system. So like back in the day, there were people who were like, okay, so some people can't afford to go to college. So like, let's give them loans. And so as the, is the propensity of, like, student loans started to increase as we were guaranteed the option to take a loan to go to college,

some colleges quickly realized, like, oh, there's an 18-year-old kid or 17-year-old kid who's making a financial decision. They don't understand the value of money. Like, they're signing up for, like, $200,000 in loans. And we can charge them 210. And, like, they're not going to know the difference. Because everyone is telling kids that you have to go to college to be, like, happy to be successful, things like that. So over time, essentially what happened is we guaranteed loans. What we essentially did was like give a blank check to educational institutions to like increase the costs and there's going to be essentially no repercussions because like what like put yourself in the head of like an 18 year kid or maybe you are an 18 year old kid. Like what are your options,

right? If a college costs 210 versus 112 versus 208, like can you really shop around? And the whole problem is the industry as a whole, like everyone's increasing prices. So what are your options? So like here's, you know, a couple of points here where like you may say, oh, but like is this actually the case, Dr. Kay? So let's like, let's look at some research. Okay. All right. So like this looks at the, the caught. I don't know if this is a reputable source or not, but I think it illustrates things with with a graph, right? So if we look at like the average college tuition and fees have increased by 1,200% since 1980, while inflation is up 236%. So this is kind of interesting because if you look at this is great. So if you look at college tuition and fees surged between 10.3% between May of 2003 and 2004,

so there are interesting events that happen here, which sort of account for this, right? So like some of these increases, I don't know if you all can tell, but the rise is increasing. So around 2008 to 2014, essentially Obama federally guaranteed anyone who would loan money to college students. So what the government did in 2008 during like this economic recession housing crisis is there were a bunch of lenders like tuition lenders who were terrified that like students were going to default because the economy was bad. And so the government actually stepped in and said, you know what? We'll guarantee those loans. So like you don't have to worry about a generation of people defaulting. And when that guarantee steps in, what happens to the cost of college?

right it actually if you look at the cost of college it's like pretty simple like you know it's like pretty level and the more guarantees that we provide that guarantee program ended around here by the way and what do you see like you start to see a leveling off in costs and so let's take a look at whether um let me try to find the right yeah so like let's see if like there's a correlation here so this this is a reputable source this is the new york fed okay which found that we find that the pass-through effect on tuition of changes and subsidized loan maximums of about 60 cents on the dollar. So what this, this paper is actually talking about, this analysis by the New York Fed, essentially is talking about how for every dollar that you make available through loans, essentially it increases the cost of tuition by 60 cents.

So that there's like, there appears to be a direct correlation between making loan money available and the cost of tuition. Now, I'm I may be misreading that a little bit. Finance definitely isn't my strong suit, but there's, like, a lot of evidence that suggests that the increased availability of loans actually does correlate with, like, the increased cost of college. And so this is where we kind of come back to the idea of evolution, because, like, it's sort of a good idea, right? Like, imagine you're a lawmaker and you're saying, like, oh, there are some people who can't afford college. Let's try to sort of deal with education inequality by, like, making things available to poorer people. Now, let's forget for a second that they decided instead of like, you know, paying for tuition, they decided to give out loans and put that burden on the people who are economically disadvantaged and needed loans in the first place. That's kind of skirt back. But they wanted to, you know, they wanted to make education available to everyone, irrespective of your ability to pay. And so that's like a good step, but this is exactly what evolution does. Unless you have the right natural selection

pressures, what's going to happen is like we're going to see an inflation of the cost of college, right? And so like let's see if, you know, let's take a look at some other statistics around this. So if we look at trends in college pricing, okay? So this is from the college board. So arguably a reputable source or not. But what we see is that from 2001 to 2013, like annual increases in published tuition and fees exceeding 5% were common. Right. So we're talking about a 5% increase in the cost of college per year over that decade. And so then people are saying like, oh, okay, like, so the cost of college is increasing, like, what accounts for that cost? And this is where things get really, really tricky? Because is college actually, like, is the amount, is the cost of delivering the education increasing by that amount? And I definitely don't think so. And so this is where we can start to see, like, interesting, you know, other variations where, like, we can look at, you know, the cost of, like, administrative costs in colleges have started. started to climb. And what we find is that essentially like the how much administrators are being

paid is like skyrocketing. So 42 presidents of private colleges were paid more than a million dollars in 2011. And that's six more than two years ago. And I think now the number is like over 110. So there are over 110 college presidents that get paid over a million dollars a year. And we see like increased administrative costs, administrative costs all throughout. And so then you may say like, okay, if we're like, if the costs are increasing, like, what about, you know, how much are we like, are we paying professors more? And it turns out that that's not really the case. So what we find here, oh, my God, I don't want to accept cookies. This is so annoying. Okay. Inactive. Okay. So if we look at this, what we find is that like this is looking at 14,000 postdoctoral researchers working at 52 institutions. salaries are ranging from $23,000. This is a postdoc. This is a guy or girl with a PhD, right?

This is a doctor of something, someone who spent $5 to $7, I mean, five to seven years of their life, becoming an expert in a field. And their salaries range from $23,000 to $100,000. So we're certainly not paying the postdocs. We're not paying your TAs more. Furthermore, like if we look at, so the median salary is about $47,000. So even though costs have risen drastically over the last 30 years, it doesn't seem like we're actually paying the people who are educating you more money. And so now we begin to see that this is like really setting up a very like messed up system where we're making money freely available to people.

We're increasing the cost of college because like, you know, you're 18, like what are your options? Like you don't really have much, right? we're not necessarily like paying the people who are teaching you more. So like who's pocketing that 1,200% increase versus the 236% inflationary increase? So that's like a thousand percent, you know, just like disappearing into the void. So a portion of that is due to decrease state funding. So states are able to pay less for college. So like that sort of makes sense that we're passing on a portion of those costs. But it does appear that when you make federal money available, that the cost of college is actually going to go up by 60 cents on the

dollar. So, like, this is a really, really tricky picture because, you know, you can say that, you know, these costs are increasing, but like, what does the cost of education actually mean? Because it doesn't seem like it's actually being passed on to, like, paying the people who educate you more. And so this is where, like, it gets lost in this black hole of, like, administrative costs, where we know that now there are, like, over a hundred, you know, college presidents that get paid over a million dollars a year. And so this is like a huge problem. So now we get to the question of like, okay, so what do we do about it, right? So let's try to put this into perspective for a second. So let's like let's look at a couple of averages. Okay. So the average cost of a private

college is about $46,000, $47,000 a year. And if we look at the average salary of someone with a doctoral degree, it's about $47,000. It's like the same number. So I want you guys to think about this for a second, okay? So the average postdoc works, I'd say probably around 55 hours a week. All right? For you to go to one year of college, it costs you about $47,000. The average postdoc gets paid $47,000 for a year of work. So what this means is for the cost of tuition to attend college, you could pay 11 postdocs for five hours a week of personal tutoring. You could hire over 10 PhDs to tutor you for five hours a week, and it would be the same as you attending college. Like, that is staggering. Just think about how much educational value, $47,000 actually buys you.

So, like, what's the discrepancy? Right? Because when you go to college, you don't have 11 people with PhDs tutoring you for five hours a week. What you have is a professor in a classroom with 500 people. You're in class for like 12 to 15 hours a week, right? You're paying one dude something to teach 500 people. On top of that, they may be doing a crappy job and like, you know, like not really caring about your education. Like if you're a chemistry 101 professor and 30 students fail, what do you do? Absolutely nothing. What has a, happens. You just get an F. Does your college ask you? Like, hey, like, what's wrong? Like, is it, was it hard for you to learn in some way? Was the teacher doing a bad job? Like, none of that. Like,

they don't care actually about your education because they're getting the tuition all the same. In fact, if you fail, like, they just get one more year of tuition because you got to make up the class. You get a couple of TAs, right? So, like, what, like, how many hours of actual education? You're paying $47,000 a year if you go to a private college, $21,000 if you go to a public college. And like, what is that education actually, what is that money actually buying you? How much actual education is it buying you? Because the cost of, you know, the market value of 55 hours of weekly educative material. Like, you can hire a PhD to tutor you for 55 hours a week for the cost of $47,000. And what are you getting? It's like nowhere near that, right? And so this is what's actually staggering is because like colleges are not, does. to actually teach people. Like, that's not what they're there for. That's not, like, there's no evolutionary pressure. There's no natural selection to make colleges actually good at teaching you stuff. And so what do we do about this, right? This is where like, you know, okay, fine, Dr. Kay,

like, what should we do? So here's the first thing. It is absolutely archaic to have a crappy professor teach 500 students. There's no need to do that. And I've seen this like time and time again, like the number of college students and the number of like people at prep schools who will go and like learn things from Khan Academy or like Randos on YouTube. Like just think about this for a second, right? You can actually get like I'll have people who will come to me. They'll be at like prep schools where they pay a hundred grand a year to go to the school. And even at that school, most of their learning comes from Khan Academy. They're like, yeah, I have a calculus professor. But Salman Khan Academy teaches calculus better. So let's just think about this as a society. Like, we now have the option to take the 10 best teachers in the world and have every single student learn from the 10 best teachers in the world. Why on earth are we like charging people $45,000 a year to sit in a classroom and talk to some, learn from some guy who's getting paid not to teach, but to do research in a particular area who doesn't care about you at all? So like, why on earth are we not standardizing education? Like, you can actually, like, learn from brilliant people on the internet. Right?

So, so, like, this is where, like, it's kind of staggering that we don't do this. And so there's another really good example of this, which is medicine. So the cost of medical school in the United States is, like, somewhere between $200,000 and $400,000, okay? Like, closer to $300,000. So this is what has. happens. So, like, this is what medicine has managed to do. So this is, like, if you want to, you know, finish medical school, you have to take this test called the USMLE. And so what the USMLE says is that, like, so this is a licensing and board exam, right? So a licensing exam.

So what this means is that like, like the ACGME, which is like the medical organization, sat down and said, if you want to be a doctor in this country, you have to have a minimum threshold of knowledge. So everyone who wants to be a practicing doctor has to practice. three board exams. And then what they did is they said, okay, here's all of the knowledge you need to be a doctor, which sort of makes sense, right?

Like, we don't want variability in, like, doctors. We want a minimum amount of competence. So everyone should understand the biology of cells. Everyone should understand, you know, like what a preon is. Everyone should understand what parasites are. Everyone should understand, like,

how the immune system works. Here's all of the information that you need to know. We have to understand what substance use disorders. It doesn't matter whether you're a surgeon or a dermatologist. Everyone needs to understand some stuff about alcohol addiction. So this is what the USMLE does, which is smart because they're kind of saying like everyone who's a competent doctor needs to know these things. And so then something very cool happened. A group of students got together and decided, you know what?

what we should do is take this information, all of the stuff that we need to know, and we should stick it in a book in a way that's very easy for students to understand. And thus was the first aid for the USMLE Step 1-Born. And look at this. This is the 2020 edition that has 2,400 5-star ratings. And like everyone in medical school, if you guys know anyone in medical school, at least in the US, you realize that like what happened for us is like I had, you know, classmates that are now plastic surgeons and neurosurgeons who didn't even go to class because everything they needed to learn was actually in first aid and a couple of other resources. That like actually there are national resources that through free market pressures, there are all kinds of these different

prep courses and the best ones rise to the top because I as a student I can say I'm going to spend 50 bucks on first aid. And I probably spent about $600 in the first two years of medical school and learned more from that $600 investment than I did from paying $180,000 in tuition. And it's staggering that I had classmates that never went to class because they thought it was a waste of time because it was more efficient to use these resources like first aid. And so it's kind of interesting because like, why don't we do this elsewhere? Because it's happening in medicine. You're paying so much for this education and it's literally a waste of your time. It is literally more efficient to skip class and use this highly naturally selected evolutionary pressure

created resource. And this is what's happening is every year people will come out with new resources. They'll realize, oh, like this is missing. So first aid is weak in pathology. So there's a guy who came up with a course specifically in pathology. First aid is weak at like sort of memorizing like microbiology stuff. So someone came up with a microbiology resource. And so you like buy these like I spent about 600 bucks. 400 of them was like on a question bank. And then 200 of them like a question bank is like I paid for 4,000 questions that taught me more than all of the questions of all of the tests I would ever take in medical school.

Because the answers to those questions were so educational. And I paid 400 bucks for it. And then here I am paying 180 grand in tuition. right? So like there's no reason for us to be paying these astronomical costs for subpar resources. So here's what I think we need to do. The first thing that we need to do is standardized curriculums. And what I mean by that is like if you're getting, and we sort of already do this, right? So if you're a degree granting institution and I want to offer a bachelor's in English literature, I have to meet certain

requirements. And so some colleges kind of like, you know, like there's some credits that are easily transferable, but that standardization needs to increase. We need to sort of standardize what curriculums are. The cool thing is once we standardize curriculums, colleges are going to fight this tooth and nail, by the way. Next thing that needs to happen is we need to be able to transfer easily from one college to another. If fundamentally, if I as a human being do not have control over where I spend my dollar, then there's never going to be in an improvement in college. there must be a financial pressure for colleges to actually improve. Next thing that we need to do is make these resources widely available.

So like this is where if we can learn calculus from Salman Khan, who's a fantastic teacher, then like that's also happens to be free. And so like we shouldn't be paying researchers who don't care too much about teaching. Or I know this sounds kind of crazy. This is the other crazy thing. How much formal training in teaching does a, biology professor have. This is the other thing that I can't believe I forgot to mention, right? This is staggering. We are paying, you are paying $50,000 a year to learn biology from someone

who has never learned how to, like, has never learned how to teach. So, like, this is where, you know, a place like Harvard Medical School is actually fantastic because I teach, I teach medicine, right? So I teach, like, some stuff around psychiatry and stuff. And I had a total of 16, maybe 16 hours of education on education, and that's like the high end. This is at Harvard Medical School, over four years. They spent 16 hours teaching me how to be a good teacher, I think. I may be wrong. It may be twice that. Maybe closer to 30 hours over four years, right? So it's kind of crazy because like, hold on a second. Like, no wonder, like some teachers and professors suck because we don't actually train them. Like, just think about this. You are going to learn, like, so when it

comes to like grade school, like everyone has to learn how to teach, right? If you want to be a grade school teacher, a middle school teacher, a high school teacher, presumably you have to have some kind of education or certification in order to like teach people. But when it comes to college, it's like, you know what? You actually don't need any of that because, and that shows you, like, what does the college care about? Do they actually care about teaching you? Because if they did, I know it sounds crazy, maybe they would hire people who had formal education and training, like in teaching, but they don't. So like, what does this show us about the incentives? Is that, like, actually providing a good education is something that most colleges don't care about. And they may

say they care, but what are the evolutionary pressures? Like, what are they actually improving? You know, I don't know, because it doesn't seem that, like, people are, like, learning better, right? So for a 1,200% increase in the cost of education, is everyone more knowledgeable than they were 30 years ago? Like, I don't even think so. So here's what I would suggest. The first is that you have to standardized curriculums. And the second is that, like, I know this sounds absolutely crazy, but if you could test out of college, if you could just study on your home and test out of college, the price of college would drop. If you no longer needed to attend college to get a college degree, right? So if we say that this is the minimum competence to become an English teacher

or to have a degree in English literature, if you could do that, and I definitely think that that could be the in physics, for example, like you could do something like that. There are some things, I don't know exactly how you accomplish that. But if you did that, like, if you could actually demonstrate, like, I know it sounds absolutely crazy, but this is what we did in medicine. I don't know if you guys know this.

Medicine is like kind of a complex subject. But what we did in medicine is we realized, like, oh, if we don't guarantee a certain minimum level of competence, people will die. So let's offer a test that guarantees a certain minimum level of competence. And if you can do it in medicine, I'm pretty sure that there are smart people out there who can figure out how to do it

in basically every other subject. Right? And then something crazy happens is if you pass that, you get the degree. That would bottom out the costs of college. Right? It would completely change the game. Because then the emphasis,

what the college has to do is bias towards like actually teaching you. Right? So what the college has to compete against is like your ability to like learn on your own. Which means that what The college has to say is like, I want you to give me $10,000 a year because I will teach you better than you can teach yourself. And then they have a standard of comparison. So we got to standardize curriculum so that you can transfer.

I think sort of standardizing curriculums also involves like sort of standardizing like the requirements to like, you know, graduate with a degree. The next thing that I think we should do is like it's absurd. You shouldn't have to learn from a crappy professor. And if you have to learn from like Khan Academy or other online resources, like so be it. Instead, your tuition money should be diverted towards other things that students actually struggle with. You should actually have 20 hours of like small group education available to you if you want it. So the problem with online schooling is that it's like hard to like sit there and just watch

lecture video after lecture video after lecture video. So I think what colleges should do is like give you structure, right? So like it costs $47,000 to get 55 hours of PhD work per week. What that means is that for $47,000, like, you can take 11 students and give them five hours of tutoring a week. Or what you can do is take like 10 students and have the TA say, hey, we're going to watch these videos. I'm going to play the video on the projector from 10 to 11.

And from 11 to 12, we're going to sit down and we're going to do problems. You can ask me questions. I'm going to be around for two hours. Like that's the way that education should be. It should be small group, emphasized on your learning. And that way, if you don't learn something, like someone there who's like invested in sort of making sure that you learn. The other crazy thing is that we could also invest tuition money in other things. Like, you know, we can teach people

like social and emotional skills training. We should like support their mental health. We can like teach them yoga and stuff. Like let's start to like teach people how to be like more competent human beings because we sure as hell or have this gigantic bucket of money that we're using to like deliver subpar educations, and to deliver a superior education actually costs less than what the college is paying now, because you don't need to pay some, you know, 50-year-old guy who has no interest in teaching to, like, teach, like, introductory biology to, like, 500 freshmen. You just don't need that anymore. It's, like, useless. It's, like, worse than actually learning biology from some dude on YouTube. The last thing that we need is transparency for colleges, right? Like, we need some kind of rating

system and like feedback mechanism as well as like outcome statistics for college. You know, if you go to this college, what are your chances of graduating in this many years? What is the median income for people? Like what percentage of people secure a job within one year? What is the median income of the people who have a job within one year? What percentage of people are employed? What percent, what's the median income for this degree from this college five years out? This is data that we can absolutely collect, right? But the problem is that, like, there's no transparency. So what do colleges do? They pay for marketing. Right? So, like, this is crazy. The other thing that has skyrocketed in the last, like, 20 years is marketing budgets for colleges. And if you think about it, like, why do they

spend more on marketing than they do on education? It's because here's this fat little freshman worth $200,000 that if we can convince this fat little freshman to come to us, we will get $200,000. So we will spend $50,000 or $30,000 or $20,000 to secure convincing this freshman to come to us. That is actually worth more than them than actually giving you a quality education. And so that's what we need to do, chat. Like this is the problem with the education system. Like all of the evolutionary incentives are misaligned. And as long as we as students don't have the capacity to like take our money

elsewhere or, you know, someone tries to disrupt the system by offering, and I think we're actually seeing this, right? Like, so we have these, like, coding schools and things like that that have alternative, like, um, you know, like educational systems. So it's like a university that only grants a CS degree. They'll get you a CS degree in two years. And it's like they're going to teach you how to code. So I think that's a good example of like what we need to see more of. Like we need to see more disruption that's based on transparency and outcomes. Because I know it sounds crazy, but like the system is not designed for outcomes for the student. Like when you, if you've gone to college, like, what did they tell, like, what were your chances of being where five years after you went to that college?

No one cares. No one cares about outcomes from college. Right. The only thing that that universities too care about is rich alumni. So like that's something that they're really good at. They're really good at sort of like, you know, recognizing, okay, like, let's be like, let's try to get rich alumni. Like, that's good. Anyway, so that's the education rant. Like, I think at the end, like, I think at the end of the day, you know, if you want to understand the educational system, you got to start with evolutionary biology. And how did we get to where we are? We got to where we are because it used to be that, like, you know, you needed a human to teach you stuff. This was before the internet, which made sense. A couple thousand years, like, we needed a human to teach us stuff because that's the only way to learn. Then what happened is you needed, like, experts in the field to

be the teachers because that was the goal of college. Like, very few people went to university. The only reason you went to university is if you wanted, like, you know, do the latest experiments in physics. In order to advance the field of physics, what you needed to do is learn from the guy who had done all the experiments so far so that you could like become the person who did the next experiment. So it makes sense that researchers and teaching were aligned. With kids around, me time runs out fast. Don't waste valuable child free minutes on a drink run. Instead, get Drizzly, the number one app for alcohol delivery. Frizzly has the largest selection of beer, wine, and spirits delivered in under 60 minutes. Get date night rolling before your parents bring him back.

about a living room slip and paint. They'll never know you stole their crayons. Download the Dr. Drizley app or go to Dr. Drizley.com. That's D-R-I-C-L-Y.com today. Dr. Trudy Fleer here. Let's discuss a very real existential threat to internet speed. T-Mobile home internet. It lags. Now what is lag? Like is a delay in data being transmitted across the internet? Switch to Xfinity for a strong, reliable connection. Learn more at Xfinity.com slash T-M-O-Facts. But then something funny happened. College stopped being about advancing the field, and it started being about developing a skill set so that you can be productive as a member of society.

And when that happened, we somehow missed the boat on divorcing the research stuff from like training, like emphasizing teachers who were actually good at teaching and like living up to the goal of college, which is to like help you be productive and whatever you want to be productive in. And along the way, like we decided, hey, like you can get a loan for whatever.

Like you can study whatever you want, underwater basket weaving for 50,000. K a year and we'll give you a loan for it. Go for it. And then we have these people who grow up and they're like, I want to do underwater basket weaving. And then like the federal government's like, here you go. Here you go. You're $50,000. And then like you go year one, year two, year three, year four. And then if someone does a bad job at teaching you underwater basket weaving on year three, like there's nothing you can do about it. Like you can't transfer. You're stuck. And so as long as these like, as long as there is not a financial pressure on colleges to change,

like this is not going to change. So we can try to disrupt the system. And what I advocate for is like, you know, you shouldn't pay 50 grand a year if you're going to be watching Khan Academy learn everything anyway. Like, that's absurd. What you end up with sometimes is like a system like medicine, which is the most absurd of all, which is that like we pay for this degree, but it is actually more efficient for us to not attend their educational curriculum and to like watch it, you know, by ourselves at home. Now, there's a big caveat there because a lot of the clinical medicine you can't learn from a video. Like you have to go to a hospital and you have like people teaching you and stuff. So that's, like, watch it. You know,

that's actually what I think we should do. We should emphasize, you know, have like this Darwinian system of like, who are the 10 best calculus teachers in the world? Let's have everyone learn from the best teachers in the world. Let's invest our money in supporting people with like organizational habits, social and emotional skills training, ton of TAs, right, teaching assistants, people whose job it is to actually focus on you and help you learn instead of one guy or girl teaching 500 random freshmen and doesn't care what percentage of them fail or pass. That's how we do it. That's my rant.

Okay. Questions. Vote Bernie? Yeah. So I think like community colleges, so a lot of this is sort of directed at private colleges because I think, you know, I don't know why private colleges cost twice as much, right? So you could say that private colleges, that the reason that tuition is low for public colleges is because they get state funding.

but I'm not so sure that that's entirely the case. So community college, so here's the thing about a community college, right? I don't know that a community college, so I think a couple things. One is that community colleges tend to have more teachers that are not like research based. Right? So like they're actually there to teach and like that's sort of their primary job. Whereas for a lot of teachers like they may, a lot of professors may enjoy teaching, but it's not their primary job. Like whether they get promoted or not does not depend on how many of their 500s. students are satisfied with the quality of their education. You don't become chair of a department at a university by having a lot of happy students. You become chair of a department by doing a bunch of research and getting a bunch of papers published. Okay. So there was a question here. Hi, Dr. Kay. I'm into the second year of computer science degree and I'm doing terribly. I failed all my courses on the first semester. Well, I was doing okay on the second when I just stopped carrying halfway through. you know, the reasons being courses are difficult.

Most of the teachers are terrible. And lastly, I just don't care. Right? So, like, this is where, uh, I'm just thinking about quitting. Yeah. So this is where like, you know, I don't know exactly what to tell this person, but like this is exactly the problem is that colleges have gigantic piles of money. Like, they're collecting God knows how much money from you.

And like, I think it should be their responsibility. Like, what's the goal of a college? Like, what's their job? What's their dharma of a college? right so like i would hope that the dharma of a college is to like train students to be competent and whatever they want to be competent in and so this is where like if i was running the university that you were at like i'd think about offering you some kind of like behavioral support interventions maybe go to like university health services and get evaluated for depression or

something like that right because like the goal is to get students who are like competent and graduating so you don't have to you know stop paying research or tons of money and taking advantage of postdocs. And like, imagine if this person had a tutor who worked with them for 50, was available for them for 55 hours a week. Because that's what they're paying. No, I'm talking about Dharma. Right?

So, Dharma is duty or responsibility? What is the duty of a college? So, someone's asking, what do I think about free college? So remember, free college, reducing the cost to the student is only half the problem. So if we make college, free, I don't think that that's going to fix anything. I mean, it's not going to fix. It won't fix. It'll fix something. But it's only half the problem. The biggest problem is that there's no pressure to make college a good learning experience. Right. Like that's the problem. There's no

like transparency. There's no like emphasis on like, you know, requiring people to be teachers and training people to teach. All right. So this is where where people say, okay, like one person is commenting, like, college or where the hot chicks are. Yeah. So, like, I think college is a wonderful experience. Don't get me wrong. Like, the college experience is lots of fun, but let's think about this. What's the goal of college? You know, what is the duty of the institution itself? And it's like, sure, like, I think, you know, socialization is a really important and fun part of college. But what we're talking about is if you're a college administrator, when you wake up in the morning, like, what is your goal? Like, what are you doing at your job? You know, are you

trying to be like a matchmaking institution so that people can find love? Or you're trying to educate people to, you know, be productive members of society. I mean, I love college. I think it's great. Like, the experience is wonderful. What I'm saying is all the incentives are messed up. It's like all the incentives are long or wrong. So like, as a guy in his 30s living in Eastern Europe, is there any online, legitimate online courses for getting a legitimate degree? I would hope so. but I don't know for sure. Okay, you guys want to do like questions or what, chat? Uh-oh.

I hear a childer is coming. Childers come. Okay. Let's see. What are we doing? All right. Other, other thoughts? Do you...

Okay. Okay. So I think we've got... So I think we've got... Okay, so we've got a set of questions. I think, you know, Some people had asked us for more practical questions, so that's what we're going to do. So all these questions come from our Discord.

Okay, so let me go ahead and let's take a quick look at these. Let me get some water. Okay. So thank you to everyone who's posted questions on our Discord. So we're going to try to do a little bit of Q&A today. I'm going to try to wait until the childer hath left. Okay. All right. Hello, Dr. Kay. I'm an educator and I've been working with some high school students

throughout the year. Here in Canada, we have been working remotely for some time now, and I have a specific student in high school who is struggling with isolation and lockdown. He is constantly complaining about school and sees no future for himself. It makes it very difficult to motivate him to do work, and many sessions end up being an outlet for him to vent his frustration. He becomes very anxious and angry when we discuss schoolwork, and he says that he fears that he will do nothing in his future. Besides being there for him, I am at a loss on how to help. I've tried to help him set goals and ask what he wants to do, but nothing seems to work. Any suggestions on how to proceed? Thanks for everything you do. Oh, this is a great question. Okay. So, let's see if we can figure this out.

Okay. So, like, first of all, I just want to say, I think it's awesome that people in this community works so hard to try to make the world a better place for people who are struggling. Right? Like that's just amazing. That like, you know, here we are talking about how most teachers are bad. And then like here we have, you know, PogTchR. And like the Pog teacher is the one who actually like cares about his student and goes above and beyond to try to give them like a good experience. So props to you.

So here's the thing that I want you all to understand. So sometimes if you're trying to help someone who feels like they're inadequate or that the future is hopeless, a lot of what we try to do is to like problem solve with them. Right? We try to give them like structure. We're like, hey, do this. Hey, try to do this. Like, hey, keep your chin up. And there's a really tricky problem that we can get stuck in, which is that if I set a plan, like, let's say I'm a teacher and I want to help someone who's struggling. And I say like, hey, like, why don't you like, why don't we develop like a study schedule? And they feel inadequate. And the most of the more you try to help them, if they fail, what is it actually reinforce? Right? So, like, I know it sounds really bizarre, but the more you try to help them, the more it can actually reinforce their sense of inadequacy. Because here I am, I suck at life. And then here my teacher is, they're doing so much. They're giving me, like, this study plan. They're working out of their way, and I still can't do it. Do you see how worthless I am? Do you see how worth... Even with all this extra help, I'm so worthless.

Right? It's really tricky, because sometimes, when we try to help people, if they feel inadequate, if we try to push them too much, what ends up happening is that they end up failing and actually like feeling really bad about themselves. So I know it sounds really, really bizarre, but this is why like when I work with people who are kind of hopeless, I don't start by solving problems for them. I don't start by trying to make it better, right? I start by trying to meet them where they're at, which can be hard, especially if you're a teacher. But like, you know, it sort of starts with like, hey, you know, what is it that makes you think that you're bad at this stuff?

Why do you think your future is hopeless? And this is where, you know, really they need to be working with like a guidance counselor or something. Hopefully people who are trained in this stuff. But like the goal, if you have a friend like this, is to meet them where they're at. And as you start to ask these questions, okay, why do you think you're hopeless? You know? And then like, it's not really your job to convince them and say, like, hey, I know it's really hard. I'd like to help you.

And I can imagine that the more that I push to help you, the more inadequate you feel. Because then it's like, here I am, like, helping you and offering to make it better. And I can imagine that you must feel like really, really stupid, that your teacher is going out of their way to help you. And it doesn't seem to be working. That must suck. Right? So it's really tricky. But, like, sometimes the more we push people to, like, you know, try to do something.

And the more we help them, it can actually have the opposite effect. Now, the good news is that even though your student seems to be struggling, don't. Don't underestimate the value of what you do. And this is another real problem for people who are trying to help someone. It doesn't seem to be working. So we think that, like, I don't see an external change. So my help isn't useful. I should do something else.

But I've worked with a ton of people who, like, you know, years down the road, will remember that teacher who believed in them even when they didn't believe in themselves. And so, oddly enough, like, I know it sounds weird, but even if it feels like you're not being successful, the support you're providing them is probably really, really important. I know it sounds kind of weird, but you can also get into this weird kind of psychological situation where, you know, they recognize that the more hopeless they feel, what do you do? You exert more hope on them, right? So they can take their feelings of hopelessness to you and they can rely on you to give them hope. So it's sort of like you're holding hope for both of you

in the relationship. And even though they're recognizing that like, or they may not sort of consciously recognize this, what sort of develops is a pattern where they come to you, I'm so worthless, I'm so worthless, I'm so worthless. And you're like, no, you're not. And so that's a really important, like, you know, drink of cool water on a hot day for them. So, you know, one thing I'd say is don't stop what you're doing. And the fact that it isn't, quote, unquote, working. Be careful about that. Because just because you don't see a change doesn't mean that it isn't working. And as someone myself who like people believed in me when I didn't believe in myself. And like, you know, they didn't turn me around then, but a year from a year from then, two years from then, three years

later, four years later as like I was struggling to get into medical school and had gotten 80 rejections and it like applied for two years in a row. I was thinking about applying for a third year. I thought about quitting. You know, family members of mine told me like quit. Like, you know, you've gotten 80 rejections. How many more do you need before you realize like this isn't going to happen for you. And in those moments, right, where they're telling me to quit, I have internalized the voice of the person who told me not to quit. And so like, it flips things around.

And then suddenly, like, within me, like this voice has been implanted from the people who believed in me. And like, that's the voice that rises to the surface when other people tell me to quit. And so don't underestimate the value of what you do just because you can't see the value of what you do. Right? Because like as a high school teacher, you're going to have a long, you're going to have a profound impact on this person. So keep doing what you're doing and try to meet them a little bit more where they're at and try to understand that like, you know, hey, I know it's tough. When I push you to do things, does it actually make you feel worse about yourself? And then say to them, that's okay. Okay? All right. Next. It's great that you're doing the work that you're doing.

Okay. Also, there are a couple of practical things. Like, you know, if you guys have a guidance, counselor or things like that, like you have to, you know, if you have the option to get a mental health evaluation, that's definitely a good idea. This is sometimes how, like, depression, ADHD, like, this is a very good, you know, I've seen a lot of kids with ADHD who actually manifest this way. You know, like, very high IQ, bad ADHD can manage in a school environment where they have enough structure and cues to be able to keep up with the schoolwork. But the ADHD mindset just goes wild when they're like in isolation and lockdown. And then like the IQ isn't enough. Makes it very difficult for him to motivate. So low motivation is one of the key screening features

of ADHD. Okay. Yep. I did say ADHD. So if someone wanted to implement your strategy of giving yourself more things to do rather than less to conquer procrastination. What does that process look like? Can you go overboard? How did you make that transition? Thanks. This is such a good question. All right. So for a little bit of backstory, okay? So here's what I found. Vatas, so this goes back to Ayurveda. So if you guys are unfamiliar with that, check that out, you know, check out our YouTube channel, find something that where I talk about Ayurveda. But not everyone's mind is the same. Okay. So if you are struggling to conquer procrastination and you are a vata, which means your mind is like the wind, you get interested in things very easily, you get bored of things very easily. It's hard to have your mind stick on one thing, but you can actually accomplish in three hours of last minute panic what another human being takes three days to do. Right? You wish you did it three days calmly. But when push comes to shove, you kind of dig deep. You're in last minute panic and you actually like, do an awesome job in three hours. Awesome meaning you still get a B or a C, but like it's, you know,

superhuman compared to what the regular humans can do. So how do you give yourselves more things to do? So this is the goal of this is that VATAs respond well with with crises and deadlines. Okay. So like the Vata thrives when there's like a little bit of stress or crisis or deadlines. And the question is can like, you know, how do you practically implement this? And can you do too much? Can you do too much? Absolutely, yes. It's still a problem I run into nowadays.

How do you implement this? I'd start by recognizing that your mind is going to get bored of particular things, which is fine. So what I would do is take like, I'd start with three or four things that your mind is going to cycle through. So you're going to do task number one for like anywhere from an hour to a couple of days. And then you're going to be ready to get bored of that. And when you get bored of that, you're going to, like, switch to task number two. And then switch to task number three and switch to task number four. Now, the problem that most vataz get into is that once they switch it to task number four,

they then move on to task number five. Instead, what you want to do is go back to task number one. So I want you to pick, like, three or four things that you can afford to procrastinate each one for, like, one week. And then you let your mind gravitate towards whatever. it wants to do. So like a good example or a bad example would be like potentially like, let's say like, you know, a plant in summertime. Like you can't water, you can't skip a plant watering a plant for a week, right? So you want to be careful. You have to pick tasks that you can afford to leave lying for a

little while. And then like, you know, whatever you're naturally interested in is what you should work on. And then when you get bored of that, move to the next thing and you'll find that it's actually easier to get your interests going. And once you find that right back, balance, what will eventually happen is you'll get into this phase of like almost perpetual last minute panic, where task one really needs to be completed by Monday. So you're like over the weekend last minute panic. Oh my God, like tasks two and three need to be done by Friday. So then something really magical happens. When you are in last minute panic long enough, you will start to naturally space things out. So when you have two deadlines, and you guys know this if you studied for finals,

right? Like you can wait till the last minute to study for a test. But if you have two finals on Friday, most people will actually start studying like on Monday as opposed to Wednesday. So the more you operate in last minute panic between three or four things, eventually you'll start spacing them out, which is like absolutely a neuroscientific thing because your mind is like, this is just too hard. It's too much last minute panic. And finding that balance is tricky, but I'd say usually three to four tasks is like a good thing to try to juggle. And the goal is to juggle as many balls as you can without dropping a single one. And for different people, like, you'll juggle a different number of balls. You know, the balls can be like different kinds of tasks. So there are times where I'm

juggling like three or four things, times where I'm juggling five or six, times where I'm focusing on like one or two. And even then, I can focus on one task for like a month if I know I have like five things to do the next month. Right? So I'd say a little bit of trial and error. Pick three or four things that can afford to be like you can afford to procrastinate on a little bit. And then, you know, let yourself be in a state of like last minute panic for a couple weeks at a time. And let that drive you because if you're driven by crises and deadlines, just sign yourself up for crises and deadlines. Good question.

Okay. Okay. Hey, Dr. Kay, how do I learn not to beat myself up so much for not being the best in all my classes? I've been told that it's not healthy to get so obsessive over it, nor should it even be a goal that's attainable. Is it fine to continue treating college as a competition, or should I try to adopt a different mindset? Okay.

So if you guys pay attention, okay, this is sneaky, sneaky one. How do I learn to not beat myself up? What is this question? This question is another form of beating yourself up. You see that? Oh, like, how do I, like, oh, I'm so, I'm so dumb. I beat myself up. And it's not healthy, but I'm so obsessive.

I'm so bad. Oh, there you are, beating yourself up, about not beating yourself up. You guys see that? It's tricky. Tricky one. Okay, so let's talk about this question. You know, so first thing to understand, so this person says it's not healthy. Well, it may not be pleasant, but it may have.

actually lead to better outcomes. So if you look at people who beat themselves up, they tend to have you know, some positive benefits from beating yourself up. So this person wants to be the best in all their classes. And so they beat themselves up for not being the best. Let's actually like appreciate for a moment that this person's like neuroticism or their self-judgment actually leads them to potentially material success. So is it unpleasant? Sure. Are you going to suffer? Sure. Is it unhealthy? Probably. But it may actually lead you to like succeed where other people would give up. So you really have to think long and hard about that. Because if you want to undo this behavior, the two things you need to do are one is recognize where the behavior comes from. When did you start being competitive? Like what does competitiveness matter to you? When did being the best? Like, how did that become important to you?

the second thing you need to do is in addition to understanding the origin of the behavior understand the function of the behavior so what is beating yourself up do for you and so like if beating yourself up is the main source of your motivation it's going to be really hard to give that up right because what the alternative is in your mind and we'll get to that in a second is actually like being unmotivated so if competition is what drives you to succeed and you want success then you may have to beat yourself up to get there. So this is where, you know, my approach to this would be like kind of twofold. First is understanding the origin of the behavior.

And you may get some power over it then. You may begin to realize like, oh, you know, like there's actually a somscar here where like early on I felt like really embarrassed because I was at the bottom of my class and I vowed myself. I'm never going to be at the bottom of my class again. And then you kind of like, you know, you kind of beat yourself up and push yourself forward and whip like, you know, you whip yourself like harder. faster, stronger, you know? So it may come from somewhere. It may come from parental expectations. So a lot of times when we grow up, like that voice in our head is something that we're taught, right? Like it's not like kids aren't born with the voice. It's like you may have learned, you know, maybe your parents compared you a lot to other people. And they were like, oh, like look at so and so.

Like they're doing this and you're doing this. Oh, like, you know, they're doing this and you're doing this. Or they may like compare you to other people in public in a positive way. Oh, your son got to be? Well, my son is so smart, he got an A, right? So you may see, I'm doing the headbobble because it's very common in Indian, like in the Indian diaspora. So you got to be a little bit careful there, but I'd start by exploring the roots of it, and the second is to explore the function of it. So really think about if you stopped doing this self, what would your life be like? And are you okay with your life turning into that alternative? And if you're not okay with it, then you're never going to give up the behavior because that's what it costs you. The good news is that there is a way forward. It's a little bit tricky to find, but it's there, which is that you can be motivated to excel for reasons besides being the best. So I think this is ultimately healthier.

But I'd say that, you know, like being motivated by things like service, being motivated by like, you know, the desire to create something, being motivated by Dharma, being, there are all kinds of other reasons. that you can bring the best out of yourself without needing to be the best. Right? So that's what I'd say, like, you know, really think about where does the behavior come from and what does the behavior do for you? If you guys want to change anything about yourselves, these are the two questions that you need

to ask. Does that make sense? Okay. So for people who wanted to me to repeat. So if you guys want to understand why your mind does something, two things you need to understand. One is where did my mind learn how to do this? Because our minds learn how to do everything, right? So like, if you think about language, like it learned, you know, the meaning of words through hearing things, through experiences. So where is the origin of the voice in my head? Where is

the origin of my behavior? When did I start caring about being the best? When did I start becoming competitive? The second thing, if you want to gain power over behavior, is to understand its function. What does this voice in my head do for me? And you may say, like, oh, it causes me lots of suffering, but sometimes you've got to be careful because most behaviors that human beings engage in offer some kind of reinforcement. That's the reason, like, neuroscientifically, like, we're wired for certain things to be reinforced. And this is where people get kind of confused because they say, like, but it hurts so much. But yeah, but it still is doing something for you. So even addictive, destructive, self-sabotaging behaviors all serve a function.

Right? Otherwise, they wouldn't be there. Like, it's just not how our mind works. So video game addiction, for example, serves the function. of suppressing our negative emotions. So it may like screw you up in life and lead to failure, but on a day-to-day basis, it protects you from particular thoughts, feelings, you know, the fact that your life is a failure, that you are a failure. Like all those thoughts and feelings disappear when you play a video game. So you guys got to be careful about understanding the origin and understanding the function.

Okay. Okay. Hi, Dr. Kay. How do I improve the retention of what I read and learn? I don't find it hard to understand subjects or new concepts, but my ability to recall what I've read or learned seems to be lacking. Great question. Okay. Hold on.

Let's see if we can. So just so you guys know, there's actually a whole, there's a whole section of Dr. K's guides about learning and memory. Let me just see if I can find this for you guys. It's in the meditation guide. I'm going to give you guys kind of a quick run through right now. Okay, but just so you all know, it's here. So in the knowledge, but I think somewhere in here,

so in the path of knowledge, we have a video about how to learn and like how to retain and what's the nature of learning. But we'll give you guys a couple of practical tips. Why isn't this working? I want to mirror my screen. Okay. So this is something we... I'll give you guys kind of a different answer here. Okay. So now let's see. Mirror. Yes. Work. Chat. Yes. Success. Success. All right. So let's do this. Let's start by looking at this question. Okay. So let's start from the top.

Okay. Hi, Dr. Kay. How do I improve the retention of what I read or learn? I don't find it hard to understand new subjects or concepts, but my ability to recall what I've read or learned seems to be lacking. So this is a prime example of a Vata memory. Okay. So Vata memories are quick to learn, quick to forget. Okay. So if we want to like retain information, here's what we, here's what we like need to do. Okay. The first thing to understand is that if you want to retain information longer. One thing you can do is decrease your vata or increase your guffa. And there are particular diet recommendations like eat foods that are warm, moist, but not too moist, and like medium to heavy. Okay, so if you have a choice between oatmeal and toast,

eat oatmeal. If you have a choice between stew and a clear soup, eat stew. So this is where, you know, quick rundown, right? So like this is the Vata kind of mind. And then here are a couple of other practical tips. So to increase retention, what can you do? The first is to understand how memory works. Okay. So Vattas need spaced repetition with sleep in the middle.

Okay? And then Vattas need to, so what I mean by that is that like what you're going to need to do because you understand things quickly, it's going to disappear from your mind. So you need to learn it again. and it's going to disappear again, learn it again, and you disappear again. So what I'd say is that rather than studying for eight hours at a stretch, studying for two hour blocks four times is going to be better than studying for eight hours. So two hours times four is greater than eight hours times one.

Okay? The second thing that you're going to need is sleep. So sleep is when you basically take your RAM and you store it on your hard drive. So sleep is when the hippocampus consolidates memory. So what that means is like, you know, if you study something and you like take a nap in the afternoon, oh, looks like it's lagging.

If you take a nap in the afternoon, then what will happen is after your nap, like you'll have restored more of that information. The next thing to kind of think about. So one is space repetition with sleep. The second thing is focus on, understanding, not on details. Okay. So for for people who have trouble, like who understand concepts, but have trouble with like memorization, this is another common issue of vatas, quick to learn. So like,

they're, they're good at understanding concepts, bad at details. So what you want to do is build a framework that fills in the details. Okay. So if you have a framework and then you have detail one, detail two, detail three, detail four, detail five, detail six, detail seven, detail eight. And like this, this is going to work way better. Whereas kaffas can learn like this. They don't need a framework. In fact, they understand this part and what they have trouble with

is building the framework. They have trouble with the lines, not with the numbers. So what you really need to do is like, I'd say like spend time thinking instead of learning. So once you like learn something, so like let's say you read something,

spend a moment to draw it out or think about it. it. And so kind of speaking of this, focusing on understanding, what you need to focus on is not rereading material. Okay? Don't do that. What you need to focus on is reproducing material. This is the third tip. And as you reproduce material and build your framework, then the details will slot into place. So your work, and this is the problem, is that most knowledge is sort of given from like a kaffa standpoint. where like this is what you're given.

They don't give you the framework. And so what you need to do if you have trouble with retention is like get a really, really solid framework. And even now, today, being a psychiatrist, I still don't remember like all of the details of diagnostic criteria of things that like I'm supposed to diagnose. Like if you ask me today like, you know, what are the diagnostic criteria of OCD? I couldn't tell you. But what I, what I am good at.

is understanding the conceptual framework of OCD. So what I end up doing is like, I have a really good understanding of a conceptual framework. And then like what I'll literally do in my office is like I won't remember the details of the diagnostic criteria. So I will like pull them up on a tablet or a computer and I'll like read them with a patient. And I'll be like, does this apply to you?

Does this apply to you? Does this apply to you? I know it sounds weird, but like essentially what I'm good at is being like a conceptual thinker. right so case and point even the way that I answered that question it's like I don't know I didn't think about that before I did it so if you have trouble trouble like if you're if you're good at understanding concepts if you have trouble with retention a couple of key things to remember okay so the first is that decrease your Vata and increase your kaffa that'll increase your retention

and your ability to memorize second thing is spaced repetition with sleep right so we want to study for short amounts of time with multiple repetitions sleep in the middle to consolidate you're studying. So I would always try to take a nap when I was like studying like for stuff. And I found it worked really, really well. I would also like take I would almost have this like four. I'd have a four am. study session. Sometimes I'd like nap at 10 for a little bit. You know, like do an afternoon stretch. Like take a break in the evening afternoon or evening. I'd go to sleep and then I'd like wake up early and I'd start. So I'd like sleep like sometimes even twice a day over a 24 hour period or three times over a 24 hour period. And so the more you space that repetition. And so the more you space that repetition. out and the more sleep you have in the middle, the more it's going to consolidate. Second thing to remember is that you're going to be good at building frameworks and memorizing details will slot much better into the conceptual framework. So start with the conceptual framework and then slot in the details afterward. The third thing to remember is, what was the third thing? See? I just forgot. What was I going to say? What was the third thing? I had a third one.

Oh yeah. Focus on reproducing instead of like don't go over the material over and over and over again. Don't review it. Try to reproduce it. So like after you study something, like rather than read something twice, what you should do is like write out what you understand or sketch out what you understand. And then what you'll realize is there are gaps in your knowledge, right? Because you won't remember everything. Then when you go back to studying again, your mind will be primed to, to figure out, okay, what am I looking for? Okay, these are the four things that I remember. There's the one thing that I forget. Right? So focus on reproduction as opposed to repetition. How does a framework look like? It's like the way that I answered that question. Right? So like I drew out a diagram.

And so even though I forgot what I just taught, I like visualized in that moment what I had done on the iPad and I was like, oh yeah, what comes after that? Okay, that's right. So it's interesting. Focus on reproduction is this Dr. K's guy. Guide to Magic. Oh, Twitter chat. How I've missed the... Okay, we got time for... How many more of these do we have? Okay, okay, great. Time for one more. All right. All right. Hey, Dr. Kay, I've been at my job for about eight months now. I feel somewhat content with the work I'm doing, but I have trouble seeing a future

at the same company. For a long time, I had my heart set on pursuing art as a career, so that is where most of my training is. I've since learned that making art more... fun for me if I only view it as a hobby for now. Side note, but it can be a little bit difficult for me to admit that I wasn't able to make it in my first career pursuit. It's relieving, but also feels bad. With this change in my perspective, I've tried to think about my skills and what I love to do and to come up with a new direction to move in. However, I feel like I can't come up with any career paths I see myself in. Do you have any advice for someone who is looking to move in a different direction in life. How do I figure out what job I want to train for now? Okay, great question.

So there are a couple of really important themes here, okay? So, um, the first is that, you know, this idea that like, I, I love to make art, but I want to do it for fun and I wasn't able to maybe make it in my first career pursuit. Those, those thoughts you guys need to be careful about. I'm not sure if this first career pursuit was the job they've got. But I want you all to realize this. So we think about a career is a linear thing, but it's not a linear thing. A career is a meandering thing. So back when I was in high school, I wanted to be at the top of the Starcraft ladder.

And then as a freshman in college, I wanted to be at the top of a Warcraft III ladder. And so, you know, pro-gaming really wasn't a thing back then, but I was super interested in video games. and then like I had to like let that go, right? And then I got interested in like yoga and meditation. And then I had to let that go. And then I went to medical school. And now I've even let that go. Right.

So it's kind of weird because my road to success or my career has developed as an integration of things that I've moved away from. Right? So now like we're combining the yoga with the gaming, with the psychiatry and the neuroscience. And that's like, that's your path in life. So here's what I'd say. Don't worry about abandoning art.

Like if you want to step away from art, so be it. Step away from it. Not actually that big of a deal. And be careful because it may resurface, right? So like if you don't enjoy doing art for your company right now, by all means, stay there right now. And try to go learn something else. I'd be a little bit careful and try to be a little bit practical. Right.

So if there's like something that, you know, if you want to learn, let's say like accounting. And I'd say like if that's something you're interested in, go for it. Try to be a little bit practical. Try to make sure that, you know, you'll be able to support yourself financially and stuff. But don't lose side of the art because you never know. Like you may be able to wind up as like an accountant for like, you know, as a personal accountant for successful artists or something like that. There are all kinds of like interesting integrations from different career paths.

And when I think about a really successful career, you know, everyone talks about finding your niche, usually finding your niche involves applying different aspects of like things that you otherwise wouldn't normally think or related. So when you think about a psychiatrist, I don't know how many people like think about someone who's focusing on like technology addiction or porn addiction or video game addiction. But that's sort of like what our niche is. Like I mean, not even really because we're really more mental health for the digital generation now. But it's kind of like, you know, moving in a particular direction is totally fine. and then like if that doesn't feel right to you, don't worry about it.

Go ahead and move in the direction that you feels good to you at the time and recognize that what you're really doing is like starting to build an interesting karmic background so that when a particular Dharma emerges, you will be prepared for it. So if you're like, oh, I wasn't able to make it as an artist, like you're not done yet. Like your life isn't over. Like maybe you'll go back and do art. Maybe you'll do art that captures, you know, maybe you'll go and work for a nonprofit that tries to help people. with like, you know, who are recovering from, you know, some kind of trauma or abuse. And maybe what

you'll end up doing is like drawing illustrations that sort of like capture in kind of like the human spirit kind of like essence of like what your clients have gone through or what the work that your nonprofit does. Maybe you'll become an illustrator for nonprofits that are looking for different kinds of like imagery. You know, you never know where things are going to go. So don't worry so much about planning. I mean, you've got to think a little bit about it. But I would not worry about committing yourself to a particular career. And instead, move in sort of like a generally practical and interesting direction for yourself. And every couple years, like sit back and try to think about, is there some way that I can

combine these two things or combine these three things? Because this is where it's kind of interesting because of the internet, you can now reach more niche people, right? So like, I don't know that, you know, if the internet didn't exist and I lived in a particular town, I don't know that healthy gamer would work, right? Because like if I lived in town with 150,000 people, I don't know like how many gamers I could interact with on a regular basis that had like mental health concerns. With the internet, what we've essentially allowed for is more niche and cross-functional like opportunities. So I'd say kind of take advantage of those and just

go where your kind of compass is leading you. So if you feel like this place isn't right for you long term, start to explore other things. If you're interested in something, don't worry so much about the long-term career now. Just make a relatively practical move that's something that you're interested in. And at periodic intervals, start to think a little bit about, okay, what can I do uniquely that no one else can do? And that's the direction you want to move in.