Before the COVID-19 pandemic, people took toilet paper—especially its availability—for granted. Everyone who experienced those hectic days probably has a new appreciation when they roll down the aisle of their local supermarket and see fully stocked shelves of TP.
A new trend shows that people aren’t only appreciating their toilet paper but finding new ways to use it that go beyond its traditional use: keeping toilet paper in their refrigerators. The most common reason is that it is an effective and affordable way to keep them smelling fresh and clean. It seems that TP’s absorbent qualities go far beyond the bathroom.
The new practice has been popularized on TikTok, where most new life hack trends seem to be springing up these days.
In late September 2023, TikTok user @Ezenwanyibackup shared a toilet-paper-in-the-fridge hack, and it received over 1400 views. The hack involves creating a paste out of baking soda and applying it to the top of the roll. “Now, just stick it in your fridge,” the TikToker said. “This simple hack is going to neutralize all the smell and moisture that messes up your fridge, keeping your food fresh and tasty for way longer.”
Smartfoxlifehacks has also helped promote the new trend in kitchen cleanliness with his video, where he shares how he keeps toilet paper in his fridge. He recommends that people change their rolls every 3 to 4 weeks. He claims the “trick” comes from the hotel industry because the toilet paper “absorbs odors.”
Another TikToker, @Drewfrom63rd1, has a unique use for the toilet paper in his fridge. He chills it and then uses it as an ice pack to keep his food cold. “You can use this as an ice pack,” he says, pulling a roll out of his fridge. “It does really work. It lasts about 8 hours.”
House Digest explains why toilet paper is so effective at keeping your fridge smelling fresh:
“For obvious reasons, toilet paper is designed to be extremely absorbent,” Brooke Younger writes atHouse Digest. “However, it doesn’t just absorb liquids on contact; it can also pull them from the surrounding air. If you’ve ever touched your bathroom’s toilet paper roll after a steamy shower, you might notice that it feels a bit damp. Placing a clean toilet paper roll in your fridge will absorb some of the internal humidity and, with it, those stinky particles.”
The site adds that toilet paper can also help keep dark, damp parts of your house, such as a closet or basement, stay fresh, too.
The toilet paper hack is effective, and it’s also a great way to save money. According to The New York Times Wirecutter, a roll of TP costs around $5—$7 on average in the US, which is much cheaper than a refrigerator deodorizer that can set you back between $10—$20, depending on the brand.
Now, for the sake of all the people who love this hack, let’s hope that word spreads so that no one gets any side-eye for having stacks of TP in their fridge. But, we should also hope it doesn’t become so popular that people start hoarding toilet paper again. That wasn’t fun the first time.
In March 2023, after months of preparation and paperwork, Anita Omary arrived in the United States from her native Afghanistan to build a better life. Once she arrived in Connecticut, however, the experience was anything but easy.
“When I first arrived, everything felt so strange—the weather, the environment, the people,” Omary recalled. Omary had not only left behind her extended family and friends in Afghanistan, she left her career managing child protective cases and supporting refugee communities behind as well. Even more challenging, Anita was five months pregnant at the time, and because her husband was unable to obtain a travel visa, she found herself having to navigate a new language, a different culture, and an unfamiliar country entirely on her own.
“I went through a period of deep disappointment and depression, where I wasn’t able to do much for myself,” Omary said.
Then something incredible happened: Omary met a woman who would become her close friend, offering support that would change her experience as a refugee—and ultimately the trajectory of her entire life.
Understanding the journey
Like Anita Omary, tens of thousands of people come to the United States each year seeking safety from war, political violence, religious persecution, and other threats. Yet escaping danger, unfortunately, is only the first challenge. Once here, immigrant and refugee families must deal with the loss of displacement, while at the same time facing language barriers, adapting to a new culture, and sometimes even facing social stigma and anti-immigrant biases.
Welcoming immigrant and refugee neighbors strengthens the nation and benefits everyone—and according to Anita Omary, small, simple acts of human kindness can make the greatest difference in helping them feel safe, valued, and truly at home.
A warm welcome
Dee and Omary's son, Osman
Anita Omary was receiving prenatal checkups at a woman’s health center in West Haven when she met Dee, a nurse.
“She immediately recognized that I was new, and that I was struggling,” Omary said. “From that moment on, she became my support system.”
Dee started checking in on Omary throughout her pregnancy, both inside the clinic and out.
“She would call me and ask am I okay, am I eating, am I healthy,” Omary said. “She helped me with things I didn’t even realize I needed, like getting an air conditioner for my small, hot room.”
Soon, Dee was helping Omary apply for jobs and taking her on driving lessons every weekend. With her help, Omary landed a job, passed her road test on the first attempt, and even enrolled at the University of New Haven to pursue her master’s degree. Dee and Omary became like family. After Omary’s son, Osman, was born, Dee spent five days in the hospital at her side, bringing her halal food and brushing her hair in the same way Omary’s mother used to. When Omary’s postpartum pain became too great for her to lift Osman’s car seat, Dee accompanied her to his doctor’s appointments and carried the baby for her.
“Her support truly changed my life,” Omary said. “Her motivation, compassion, and support gave me hope. It gave me a sense of stability and confidence. I didn’t feel alone, because of her.”
More than that, the experience gave Omary a new resolve to help other people.
“That experience has deeply shaped the way I give back,” she said. “I want to be that source of encouragement and support for others that my friend was for me.”
Extending the welcome
Omary and Dee at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Vision Awards ceremony at the University of New Haven.
Omary is now flourishing. She currently works as a career development specialist as she continues her Master’s degree. She also, as a member of the Refugee Storytellers Collective, helps advocate for refugee and immigrant families by connecting them with resources—and teaches local communities how to best welcome newcomers.
“Welcoming new families today has many challenges,” Omary said. “One major barrier is access to English classes. Many newcomers, especially those who have just arrived, often put their names on long wait lists and for months there are no available spots.” For women with children, the lack of available childcare makes attending English classes, or working outside the home, especially difficult.
Omary stresses that sometimes small, everyday acts of kindness can make the biggest difference to immigrant and refugee families.
“Welcome is not about big gestures, but about small, consistent acts of care that remind you that you belong,” Omary said. Receiving a compliment on her dress or her son from a stranger in the grocery store was incredibly uplifting during her early days as a newcomer, and Omary remembers how even the smallest gestures of kindness gave her hope that she could thrive and build a new life here.
“I built my new life, but I didn’t do it alone,” Omary said. “Community and kindness were my greatest strengths.”
Are you in? Click here to join the Refugee Advocacy Lab and sign the #WeWillWelcome pledge and complete one small act of welcome in your community. Together, with small, meaningful steps, we can build communities where everyone feels safe.
This article is part of Upworthy’s “The Threads Between U.S.” series that highlights what we have in common thanks to the generous support from the Levi Strauss Foundation, whose grantmaking is committed to creating a culture of belonging.
Have you ever wondered what the real difference is between a master’s degree and a PhD is, but felt like it would be dumb to ask? You’re not alone, and it’s not a dumb question at all. Despite what many might think, a PhD (or doctoral degree) is not a more advanced master’s degree.
“Getting a master’s and a PhD are very different from each other,” she says in a TikTok video. “When someone says, ‘Maybe I should just keep going and get my PhD,’ I kind of immediately know that they don’t really understand the difference.”
“A master’s program is about learning knowledge. A PhD program is about producing knowledge,” Dr. Ari goes on. “In a master’s, you take classes, you complete assessments and assignments, you prove you understand existing research, maybe you write a thesis or do a comprehensive exam. In a PhD, your classes are the easy part. Your real job is to identify a ‘gap’ in the literature. You design a study, you defend it to a bunch of experts, and you contribute something new to your field (theoretically).”
Perhaps the clearest way to explain the difference is through what Dr. Ari says about what each degree asks of the person earning it:
“A master’s program asks, ‘Do you understand what we already know?’ And a PhD asks, ‘Can you expand what humanity already knows about this thing?’”
A PhD program tends to be all-consuming
Dr. Ari also explains the lifestyle difference between the degrees. Master’s degree candidates are generally balancing work and family life along with their program requirements. It’s certainly not easy, but expectations are even higher for PhD candidates.
“PhD program, especially funded ones, really expect you to be all in, all the time,” says Dr. Ari. “Research, conferences, publishing, teaching. It’s a little different for each discipline, but for the most part, it’s the same.”
Most people understand that getting a PhD is harder than getting a master’s degree, but it’s not just simply about there being more or harder classes. It’s really a fundamental difference in what you are doing: consuming knowledge vs. producing it.
People are too binary about credentials. My mental model of a PhD is that it's like having a black belt.
It means you likely trained for years under a particular master, who also had a black belt, and on a certain day you were judged worthy by that master.
Many of us think of the degrees in the U.S. college system as a hierarchy—associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, PhD, in that order. But thinking of them purely as rungs to climb on a ladder is a bit of a misnomer, as it ignores the differences in the degrees’ purposes.
In many cases, you can get a PhD without ever getting a formal master’s degree, just as many people get a bachelor’s without getting a separate associate’s degree first. (And, of course, there are niche advanced degrees, like a J.D. to become a lawyer or an M.D. to become a medical doctor, which have different requirements and purposes than other doctoral degrees.)
A PhD gown usually has three stripes on the sleeve. Photo credit: Canva
Some people pointed out that there are master’s programs that are more research-based, thus more alike in nature to a PhD. However, others who have been through a research master’s and a PhD program said they were still different.
One thing everyone agreed on is that getting a PhD is no joke
Why is it that some people are high achievers who have a track record of success and some people never come close to accomplishing their dreams? Is it talent, luck, or how you were raised? Is it that some people are just gifted and have exceptional talents that others don’t?
The good news is, according to psychologist Angela Duckworth, the most critical factor in being a high achiever has nothing to do with talent or intelligence. It’s how long you can keep getting back up after getting hit. She calls it “grit” and, according to Duckworth’s research, it’s the common denominator in high achievers across the board, whether it’s cadets at West Point or kids in a spelling bee. Duckworth goes into depth on the topic in her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.
What personal traits make someone successful?
“The common denominator of high achievers, no matter what they’re achieving, is this special combination of passion and perseverance for really long-term goals,” Duckworth revealed on The Mel Robbins Podcast. “And in a word, it’s grit.”
“Partly, it’s hard work, right? Partly it’s practicing what you can’t yet do, and partly it’s resilience,” she continued. “So part of perseverance is, on the really bad days, do you get up again? So, if you marry passion for long-term goals with perseverance for long-term goals well then you have this quality that I find to be the common denominator of elite achievers in every field that I’ve studied.”
When pressed to define the specific meaning of grit, Duckworth responded: “It’s these two parts, right? Passion for long-term goals, like loving something and staying in love with it. Not kind of wandering off and doing something else, and then something else again, and then something else again, but having a kind of North Star.”
For anyone who wants to achieve great things in life, grit is an attitude that one can develop for themselves that isn’t based on natural abilities or how well one was educated. Those things matter, of course, but having a gritty attitude is something someone can learn.
“I am not saying that there aren’t genes at play because every psychologist will tell you that’s also part of the story for everything and grit included,” Duckworth said. “But absolutely, how gritty we are is a function of what we know, who were around, and the places we go.”
Why grit is so important
Grit is critical for people to become highly successful because it means that you stick with the task even when confronted with barriers. In every journey of taking an idea that you love and turning it into reality there is going to be what’s known as the dark swamp of despair—a place that you must wade through to get to the other side. It takes grit and determination to make it through the times when you fear that you might fail. If it were easy, then everyone could be high achievers.
The emotional journey of creating anything great goes through the dark swap of despair. pic.twitter.com/GlwozyARIM
Grit is what keeps people practicing in their room every night as teenagers and makes them an accomplished guitar player. Grit is what makes a basketball player the first one in the gym and the last to leave so that they make the starting lineup. Grit is knocking on the next door after 12 people have just slammed their doors in your face.
The wonderful thing about Duckworth’s work is that it presents an opportunity for everyone willing to do the work. You can no longer use the fact that you may not have specialized intelligence or a God-given talent as an excuse. All you need is perseverance and passion and you have as good a shot as anyone at achieving your dreams.
This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
Remember when you bought something, you owned it and, for the most part, only paid once? These days, companies try to extract the most value from their customers by getting them to pay more by tacking on surprise fees or add-ons that function as a subscription.
Remember when you bought software once and, if you wanted to upgrade to the latest version, you paid extra? But if you liked the old version, you kept it and it worked fine? These days, you’re forced to pay a monthly fee to use the software and are forced to pay for the upgrades whether you like them or not.
If you’re allergic to paying additional surprise fees, don’t go to Las Vegas. These days, you’ll get hit with a hefty resort fee upon checkout. Some hotels charge you up to $50 to use the in-room mini-fridge, $60 if you want to check in early, a phone-booking fee, and the most infuriating: a $25 fee to use the silverware with room service. At a time when inflation is hitting people hard, these feel like an insult to injury.
People are seriously fed up with being nickel-and-dimed everywhere they turn, so a Redditor asked people to share the subscription fees they’ve recently encountered that they need to “collectively refuse to pay” so they don’t become normalized. We chose some to be aware of and shared information on how you can avoid paying fees—or at least whittle the number of subscriptions you have to a bare minimum.
1. The online convenience fee
“I wish we could stop ‘online convenience fee’ when there is essentially no other way to pay.”
“They shouldn’t exist anyway because paying online isn’t just more convenient for the customer— it’s more convenient for the company, too! They can cut tons of positions when no one has to open actual mail or enter checks/CC numbers manually.”
If you’re tired of paying online convenience fees, one way to avoid them is to set up auto-pay with your bank, which often lets you bypass them. You can also pay by check. If you don’t want to waste paper by receiving a bill in the mail, you can usually print out a payment stub online and pay it that way.
2. School lunch fees
“Our school required us to use an app to deposit lunch money to our children’s school accounts. Each deposit cost a $2.75 ‘processing fee’ to the app itself, paid for by the parent. I started packing lunches.”
“Yes! Our school uses this, and in addition, they cap how much you can deposit at a time, which forces you to do multiple deposits and get multiple processing fees. The cap doesn’t change if you have multiple kids either, so like every 2 months I have to do a deposit for each kid and pay separate processing fees.”
“Subscriptions to streaming services that show ads. Big media is getting two bites of the apple.”
“Oh, and when you pay extra for ad-free, they stop showing advertisements from outside companies, but they replace them with ads for their own services and programming.”
Want to make sure you don’t let your subscriptions pile up unnecessarily and avoid a big squeeze on your budget? One Redditor on the thread r/LifeProTips had a great idea: write down all of your monthly subscriptions on Post-it notes and keep them in a place you look every day, like where you put your keys. As the old saying goes, out of sight, out of mind. Seeing what you’re paying for each month can help you rethink your spending.
4. A/C repair subscription
“We have a local heating and air conditioning company that’s rated near the best in the business. However, as the wife I found out, their business model is incredibly scummy and we’ve made other people aware of it because it’s predatory. If you call them for a checkup on your furnace or AC they have a normal fee for that… but if you need any type of repairs or anything you have to pay for that repair AND they make you sign up for a monthly fee that allows you to be a customer if you have issues moving forward. If you do not agree to this fee, they won’t fix your unit – regardless of you paying for the parts or not. It was like $45 a month.”
5. Subscription fees for car features
“Subscriptions for hardware features your car already has. BMW tried to charge a subscription for heated seats, and now other companies are watching.”
“Honestly, they just need to make it a law that if the functionality is present in the finished product, they by law cannot disable it. The reason why auto manufacturers used to charge more for the higher trim packages was because there was more work involved in producing them. But now they’ve capitalized on economies of scale and figured out a way to just make all the cars identical and selectively turn off features unless you pay shakedown money to the manufacturers.”
6. Utility add-ons
“In the city I live in, some teledoc company has convinced them to automatically add a $7 a month charge to the electric/water bill so everyone will have access to their service. It’s automatic, so if we don’t want it, we have to have the option removed. Most people get their bills electronically and pay automatically and won’t even notice the charge. Scammers!”
“My bank started charging a fee of $5 monthly for “undeliverable mail”. When I called to fix the prob, the security question was: What’s your address.”
Did a service you pay for recently go up in price? Tiktoker @SavingMoneySabrina has a great way to lower your bill when you call customer service. She has a simple script to follow: “Hi, my name is [insert name]. I saw that my Internet went up about $25 this month. Unfortunately, I’m not able to afford that. So if I can’t get it down to the rate that it was last month, I’m gonna have to cancel. Is this something you can help me with?” Here’s how she does it:
I hope this helps you save some money on your bill! Important note tho: when I say that I will “have to cancel,” I actually do mean it. Sometimes you’ll have to get close to cancelling for anything to happen. Trust the process! #howtosavemoney
“My wife had one of those HP subscription printers, which worked fine for her needs, and her job reimbursed her for it, so it wasn’t really a problem for her. When she changed jobs, we decided to cancel the subscription because we weren’t using the printer nearly as much, thinking we’d use up the ink in the cartridges and then just buy new cartridges ourselves. NOPE. It turns out, the whole thing stops working as soon as you cancel your subscription, and you can’t buy normal ink cartridges to put in it; it only accepts the ones specifically made for the subscription service. So now we have a big plastic paperweight with mostly full ink cartridges.”
9. Personalized pricing
“That ‘personalized pricing’ bs they are considering. The price should be the same for everyone, everywhere, and every time from the same physical store or website. If I want to order in-store pickup from the website, it should be the same price on the shelf. If I use the website at home, in the store, or down the street from inside a competitor’s store it should be the same price. If I order online from my friend’s pc it should be the same price as ordering from my own pc. The price should be the same whether I’m using the app, the website, or the physical store, not talking about delivery fees. The entire idea that a store can change the price of an item arbitrarily to what they think YOU will pay for it compared to someone else should be absolutely illegal.”
“Would you like to use our personal shopping assistant? Guaranteed to give you the lowest price offered to any customer! And it only costs 25% to use!”
10. No free parking here
“Parking fees at suburban hotels. I don’t have an issue obviously when you’re in downtown Chicago or San Francisco, but charging $20/day to park in a huge suburban hotel with a lot that holds 500 cars is obnoxious.”
“Also, parking fees at your job. I’m a nurse in Chicago. All of the major hospitals charge us a parking fee on our paychecks. Like… I get that it’s the city and parking is limited, but the hospitals own their own lots. Why are you making me to pay to come to work? Lol.”
“Back in the day, someone would write a piece of software you actually found useful, so you bought it. Later, the developer added some nice new features, you thought the upgrade was worth it, and you bought the new version. Then the next version came along with features you didn’t care about (bloatware), so you skipped it. The developer sees their income dropping and decides the solution is… a subscription.”
If you are locked into subscription software for the next few months, be sure to flip off the auto-renewal switch on the site. If they won’t allow you to do so, then set a calendar reminder on your phone for the last month of service so you can cancel before it auto-renews for another year.
Putting a dream into action can sometimes provide that little bit of magic children crave. So, when first grade teacher Ashley Lowry genuinely surprised her students with homemade hats based on their own designs, their reactions were super wholesome.
Lowry, who teaches first grade at Wallace Elementary in Kelso, Washington, is always looking for new ways to get her students excited about learning. According to KGW News, her aunt, Amy Lowry, had a thoughtful idea: “What if we created our own hats?” Amy tells the news camera, “So I had seen the idea and thought, well in the middle of winter, it would be a great project.”
So, Lowry made photocopies of the already drawn winter hats with no color. The kids were tasked with coloring in their favorite designs. Some opted for solid colors like all blue or purple. Others were drawn to colorful stripes!
Lowry shares that some of the kids were excited just to color. “I definitely saw kids who were like really excited about patterns. So you’ll see kids that had like a nice repeating pattern.”
Once winter break arrived, Lowry had her plan: she would take those hat drawings and sew each and every one of them for her 22 students. “I guess I didn’t realize 22 hats was going to take as long as it did, but we managed,” she shared.
Once they were back from break, she sent the kids off to recess so she could put each perfectly wrapped, made-to-design hat in their desks. When they returned, Lowry asked, “Raise your hand if you remember doing your hat.” Many raised their hands enthusiastically.
She then read them a book called Extra Yarn, and told them to “go to their desks and sit down.” She added, “I might do a little magic in here.” As they sat obediently at their seats she shouted, “Let’s say magic magic! Drumroll!” The children begin drumming on their desks. “Open your drawers,” she instructs.
The children excitedly do as told to uncover the gift-wrapped hats—just as they had imagined them. Delighted, some of the kids explained their design choices. “Because those are my favorite colors in the world!” one shared.
They each try their hats on to showcase what great work has been done. Aunt Amy shared, “I was just thrilled that everybody was so excited. And it looked like they’re going to enjoy the efforts.”
Lowry added, “They love accessories. So I can’t wait to see these hats bouncing around. I think they’ll love it and just that pride. It’s something that they made!”
On a Threads post sharing the news story, commenters are deeply impressed with this teacher’s choice to go the extra mile. One writes, “I absolutely love this story. The children’s teacher is amazing and these young little people will remember this moment forever. We need more stories like this in the world today.”
This Threader points out how special the teacher is for caring for these children, writing, “You can’t teach a teacher that kind of compassion and empathy for their students, it’s priceless and starts these young students with a love for education and going to school. We should all take a lesson from this teacher!”
Another states the important and obvious, saying, “You cannot put a price on a good teacher.”
The YouTube comments were equally supportive. “This made me tear up. Those kiddos are so excited! What a wonderful way to show them that people care about them and want them to be happy,” one shares.
One commenter was not only impressed with the teacher’s knitting skills, they adored the creative design picks. They wrote, “I LOVE that! As a crocheter of over 50 years experience, and a knitter of considerably less time, I can very easily appreciate all the effort that went into making all those hats! I do have to say, I really liked that one little girl’s unicorn hat—even though I’m now 73, I very much like unicorns!”
Though we’ve all had to fake a smile at times, it doesn’t feel good to receive or give one. Some have gotten so good at offering fake smiles that others may begin to wonder if a person’s smile is ever genuine. To put this worry to bed, a body language expert explains the tell that can separate the genuinely happy from the passively polite.
Vanessa Van Edwards went on TikTok to share how to tell if someone is faking their smile. Van Edwards recommends not looking at a person’s mouth when they’re smiling, but to look at the top half of their face. In the video, she explains that a genuine smile doesn’t just reveal itself in the mouth, but in the upper cheeks and eyes. A person who is genuinely smiling has a noticeable “lift” in both their upper cheeks and the outward corners of their eyes, as if those parts of the face are also smiling alongside the mouth. A fake smile is very much concentrated on moving the mouth upward with little to no change in the upper half of the face.
“If you can’t see a real smile on the top half of the face, it’s not a real smile,” said Van Edwards.
Van Edwards then notes that if you spot a fake smile it could be an opportunity to “dig a little deeper.”
How should you respond to a fake smile?
There are many reasons someone might fake a smile. While the fake is meant for deception, it’s not necessarily for malicious reasons. Maybe they want to hide their disappointment that you got the promotion and they didn’t. Maybe they don’t like the food you brought to the potluck, but they like you and want to spare your feelings. Maybe they just had a terrible day but don’t want to ruin the mood. Maybe it has nothing to do with you at all. Even with all that considered there are some folks who can still convincingly fake a smile anyway.
“The challenge with fake smiles is the cause can be from a variety of things,” facial analysis expert Brian Galke told Upworthy. “Some people were raised in environments where they were told to have a smile on their face no matter what was going on.”
So, how should you respond to a fake smile? There’s no true one and done answer. Everything depends on the situation and how well you know the fake smiler. If you are good friends with them, you may want to privately ask them if there’s something wrong. If there is or was, you have an opportunity to turn that fake smile into a real one. That’s not always necessary or recommended though.
“If you do feel that someone is outright faking their smile for protection and it’s not a sales situation, then it’s okay to mention the observation,” said Galke. “Make it non-judgmental by saying things like ‘It seems like _____’ and stay away from ‘why’ questions which sound judgmental. The key is to simply mention the observation to crack the door open in case they are ready to talk.”
A fake smile usually isn’t an intentional insult or harmful deception in most cases. It could be best to just take the fake smile as you would a regular one even if you clock it. After all, while they’re hiding something, it’s usually in the name of being polite, defusing potential tension, and overall wanting you to like them.
if you receive a fake smile, remember it has nothing at all to do with you and everything to do with them and their mood. There have been studies, articles, and reports that say that the act of smiling, even if it’s fake, can help a person boost their mood over time. In short, the phrase “fake it ‘til you make it” applies to smiling. So, if a person throws a fake smile in your direction, it could be in the hope for it to turn into a real one the next time you see them.
“Studies show that when we smile we are seen as more confident, attractive. Smiling also releases endorphins that reduce stress and due to mirror neurons when someone else smiles we want to smile which releases our own endorphins,” said Galke.
While knowing how to spot a fake smile can be a great tool to have, consideration is recommended with what you do with that information.
In one recent video, Dinin’s students were tasked with answering as many obscure questions as possible using nothing but the books in their library. Yes, just like back in the day.
After tossing their phones into a box, students were given a printed-out catalog of books to help them find the answers to questions like “When was Kentucky founded?” and “What makes Pickett’s Charge important?”
Many Gen Zers admitted this was the first time they had ever looked something like this up in a book. Dinin quipped that, to them, the whole experience must have felt like “time travel.” He also clearly enjoyed watching students come up exhausted, saying, “This is what research used to look like. This is why my PhD was so hard!”
And yet, the students managed. One even learned how to use an index, aka an “underrated piece of technology.”
As Dinin pointed out, anyone these days, not just Gen Zers, would almost certainly just Google this kind of information. And because of that, “being able to answer questions isn’t nearly as valuable in the modern world as knowing which questions are worth chasing in the first place,” which is perhaps an even bigger takeaway for students than learning how to use a library.
Down in the comments, parents and fellow teachers alike couldn’t wait to try the exercise out on their own kiddos.
“This is awesome and I will be showing this to my 11 year old who was beside himself when I took away his iPad and gave him a physical dictionary to double check his ELA homework.”
“This is brilliant! I need to do this with my middle schoolers!”
“What a GREAT experience! It’s like Escape Room, library edition!”
Others were simply grateful for the trip down memory lane.
“Thank you for sharing this! I remember to actually looking for info for any research paper in like an encyclopedia Britannica “
“Is it nerdy to say that I actually had fun researching this way back in college (even though it was laborious)?!? Gen Xer here…”
On his website, Dinin shared that he was inspired to create learning opportunities like this after spending two decades “watching brilliant students sabotage their futures because they were scared to be wrong.” He knew that, in order to combat that, he’d need to design classes that “make failure survivable (and maybe even a little bit fun),” rather than “chase success.”
And this is truly a great example of that. In our fear of failure, our enmeshment with experience, and our reliance on having knowledge at our fingertips, we run the risk of forfeiting autonomy and resilience. There is always a balance to strike, but doing so requires the willpower to ignore the alluring siren song of convenience. Perhaps in this day and age, that kind of willpower is one of the most valuable skills teachers can bestow on their students.
Follow along for even more of Dinin’s fun videos here.
There are times to speak up, moments when it’s best to say nothing, and opportunities be very considerate in your response. But when you’re on the receiving end of a back-handed compliment, a foolish remark, or a coworker takes you down a peg, and your emotions are up, it can be hard to have a thoughtful response. Often, we say something we shouldn’t.
How is it that some folks fly off the handle and say things they’ll later regret, while others can stay calm and remove themselves from the situation or take the high ground? One way to be less impulsive with your words is to use the “name it to tame it” neuroscience hack, originally coined by author and psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel. When used properly, it allows you to step back from the moment and choose the best response in a challenging situation.
When someone upsets you, the first thing to do is to go inside yourself and describe the emotion that you feel in your body. Are you angry? Are you sad? Are you afraid? Do you feel rejected? Are you disappointed? The moment you name the emotion, it will begin to subside and give you the emotional and mental room to respond to the person who caused the negative emotion, rather than impulsively reacting.
How to respond to a reactive emotion so you don’t fly off the handle:
Event happens:
1. Your body stiffens up
2. You feel an intense emotion
3. You examine the emotion and give it a name: “My body is telling me I am angry.”
4. You should feel the emotion beginning to subside
5. Choose your response instead of being impulsive
“Name it to tame it” works because, when we have a strong emotional reaction, our lizard brain kicks in, and we go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. The lizard brain is not known for giving thoughtful and strategic responses to challenging situations. When we name the emotion, our prefrontal cortex, or the thinking brain, kicks in. The thinking brain looks at the situation and says, “Alright, we don’t need to run or fight here. It’s best to give a strategic response.”
When we tune into the negative emotions by naming them, they relax because they feel heard, like when a child has hurt their knee or a loved one has real concern and you gives them undivided attention. Once the emotions are named, they are tamed. Then, you are more likely to respond to the negative person with grace and speak from the best part of yourself.
Dr. Dan Siegel, who coined the phrase “Name it to tame it,” explains the brain science behind the technique in the video below. He does a great job of explaining how it allows us to transfer our thoughts from the downstairs brain (the lizard brain) to the upstairs brain (the thinking brain), so we can calm down and respond appropriately to the situation.
Quite often, many people get a promotion, praise, or an assignment at work while feeling imposter syndrome when the result is a bigger challenge. They feel like frauds or flukes even if their previous accomplishment led to them here. There’s a feeling of being seen and fear of being “found out.” If this sounds familiar, a leadership and behavioral expert has a tip to “turn that spotlight off yourself and turn it into a flashlight.”
Dr. Shadé Zahrai went on TikTok to advise folks that are experiencing imposter syndrome via the spotlight effect. To put it briefly, the spotlight effect is something your brain does to a person to make gross overestimations on how much people notice, judge, or recall them. They feel like they’re under a spotlight, anxious that people are watching them and will call them out. The truth, according to Zahrai and others, is that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to notice, remember, or even care about auditing you. While that truth is a relief, this still may not be enough to offset imposter syndrome.
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Zahrai continued by saying that you could flip the thought and energy of the spotlight off of your identity and aim it like a flashlight onto your problem to find a solution. The spotlight of “I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m going to be exposed” turns into “This is the issue that I’m concerned about, what do I have to do or learn to address it?” It takes “I’m a fraud” and flips it into “Why do I feel like a fraud?”
“Confidence doesn’t require you to know everything in advance,” says Zahrai. “It just requires you to trust yourself enough to stay in the room, ask the question, and figure things out as you go.”
Other behavioral experts and therapists reached out to Upworthy to weigh in on what they would recommend to a person experiencing the spotlight effect.
“So much of anxiety is perception of how others perceive you and what they’re thinking about you,” said licensed therapist Cristina Billingsley. “Being that [the spotlight effect] is a common occurrence for people, I remind clients there’s comfort in knowing you’re not alone. Reminding ourselves that this theory has been tested and research shows that people overestimate how much people are actually thinking about or noticing them. Next time you’re spiraling about this, ask yourself ‘Yeah….and?’ Does it matter in the long run…today, tomorrow, next week? Does this person’s opinion truly matter to me? Would I judge someone or be this critical about them?”
Some experts agreed that the spotlight effect pivot that Zahrai recommended could be used to a personal advantage.
“Reframe the spotlight effect as a flashlight moment, turning the fear of failure and making mistakes into an opportunity to showcase your zone of genius so that others can learn from you,” recommended psychologist Dr. Angela Chen. “Take repeated action, as it will allow your brain to rewire the spotlight effect through exposure and extinction learning. Consistent and repeated exposure through taking steps toward what matters to you and what kind of person you strive to be allows your brain to create and strengthen new, non-threatening neural pathways.”
Other experts didn’t think that Zahrai’s flashlight pivot was an effective approach to ridding the spotlight effect at all.
“The approach of turning a spotlight into a flashlight treats the issue as attention-based instead of deep-rooted. This might work in the short-term but it doesn’t address the cause of the anxiety. Many with imposter syndrome have internalized a harsh inner critic,” said licensed psychotherapist Doriel Jacov. “If you simply redirect your attention, it doesn’t get rid of that internalization. It might offer some temporary relief, but the inner critic will find its way back to you.”
“Second, since the spotlight effect is fueled by negative self-perception, when you turn it into a flashlight, you might turn that negative perception outward. This leaves you judgmental and highly critical of others, which can have negative relational impacts. You may find yourself consciously or unconsciously devaluing others,” added Jacov.
Jacov did agree with Dr. Chen that frequent exposure could help navigate a person’s emotions to offset the impact of the spotlight effect.
“The biggest advice I have is to put yourself in situations that elicit the spotlight,” concluded Jacov. “The more you expose yourself to those feelings and that type of environment, the more you’ll be able to learn that you’re emotionally safe. You’ll learn that no one thinks of you in the way you think of yourself.”
