Julie Lythcott-Haims, ’89, is the dean of freshman and transfer students.
In the frenetic Information Age, the most underrated discovery is people. If we can part with our Blackberries and iPhones for a moment and engage soul to soul with a fellow human being, our outlook can be radically altered, a new level of understanding can be unearthed, and our passions can be set afire. Beat that, technology.
Doug Glant, ’64, is the father of 7-year-old twin sons.
The TV “mute” button.
Joanne Jacobs, ’74, wrote Our School, a book about a college-prep charter high school that starts its day at 9 a.m.
When I was a baby, researchers discovered that rapid eye movement (REM) indicates dreams. Our brains aren’t idling when we sleep. They’re working to “knit up the ravelled sleeve of care.” Deprived of REM sleep, we unravel.
A REM research assistant, William Dement, went on to become the father of “sleep medicine” and a popular Stanford professor. Thousands of students took Sleep and Dreams over 33 years. But the lessons of the REM breakthrough—most adults need eight to nine hours of sleep per night—haven’t affected our hurried lives.
American children average one hour less sleep per night than they did 30 years ago. Starting high school at 7:30 a.m. guarantees that students will be nodding off in class. Most school schedules leave time after school for sports or jobs, but little time for students to get a REM-rich night’s sleep. Fatigue affects academic performance, emotional stability and maybe even obesity and attention disorders.
We’d all be brighter with more REM sleep, but apparently we’re too tired and cranky to figure that out.
Pamela S. Karlan, the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, is an associate dean of the Law School.
We’ve had wheels for thousands of years, and luggage for as long as people have
had stuff they want to take with them, but when I first started as a civil rights lawyer in the late 1980s, I had to carry my bags, and I often feared I’d end up with arms like a chimpanzee from the strain. Then someone discovered you could put wheels on suitcases and roll them. Eureka! Now, I can bring lots of books with me on long trips and I can easily walk around cities with my luggage. When I injured my shoulder falling off my bike, I was able to keep traveling. And wheeled luggage will let me keep traveling as I get older.
Airline travel today is pretty unbearable, but just imagine how much worse it would be if you had to check your baggage because you couldn’t carry it quickly through the terminal to catch your connecting flight.
Barry Katz is a consulting professor in the department of mechanical engineering.
The unsung hero of my lifetime (1950+) is the memory stick. Other artifacts have had a greater impact (the hydrogen bomb), market penetration (the transistor) or functional utility (the automobile cupholder), but they are the acknowledged celebrities of my generation and one would be hard pressed to call them “underrated.” The humble memory stick, however—a few GB of flash storage with a USB connector on one end and a key ring on the other—is the purest embodiment of the Information Age in which we now live.
Or should I say “disembodiment”? The memory stick, which is heading toward the invisibility that only ubiquity can ensure, still comes in a comical range of completely arbitrary shapes (from a sporty appendage to a Swiss Army knife to rustic forest twig). But it is on its way to becoming the dreamed-of expression of function without form and substance without style. In an age whose gods are the miniature, the portable and the virtual, and whose theology is the instantaneous exchange of information, it is nothing less than the Flesh Become Word. Hallelujah!
Elise Bauer, ’82, MBA ’88, is the publisher of SimplyRecipes.com.
Ibuprofen is the only truly effective drug for menstrual cramps. Before ibuprofen, millions of women were completely debilitated with pain at least one full day every month. No wonder women didn’t truly take to the working world en masse until the late ’70s, early ’80s. This is the drug that allowed them to function reliably in the corporate world.
The following is supplemental material that did not appear in the print edition of Stanford.
Shari Young Kuchenbecker, ’70, is an author and developmental psychologist.
In Stanford’s 2005 Cap & Gown study of women honor graduates across the century, when asked “what accomplishment gives you the greatest pride?” the No. 1 answer was family and family service. With multiple answers possible, 67 percent said family, 55 percent said community contribution, 39 percent said professional/business, 21 percent said global community contribution, and dead last was financial fortune at 6 per cent.
Despite tremendous technological advancements and career opportunities, our Cap and Gown women cherished family and family service most. Thus, the greatest underrated rediscovery is our growing appreciation for the power of invisible empathic bonds formed between people . . . parent with child, siblings, lovers, family members, friends, co-workers, within neighborhoods, across our nation and now, as we grow via travel and communication, throughout our greater global community. Might these invisible empathic bonds ultimately lead us to halt warring upon one another as we discover we are all more alike than we are different?
Lily Sarafan, ’03, MS ’07, is the chief operating officer of Home Care Assistance Corporation.
Pulling all-nighters, stressing for days about a presentation, and generally behaving at all times like a Type-A overachiever results only in exhaustion, illness and attention-deficit problems. By approaching each task before me with peace, clarity and presence of mind, I have increased both productivity and happiness without any sacrifice. The idea that great success does not have to be accompanied by infinite suffering and anxiety is by far the most underrated discovery of my lifetime, as it has offered me the chance to experience a life of both cerebral fulfillment and spiritual contentment . . . and I don’t have to be in a state of permanent meditation to do it.
