Today is Thanksgiving Day. For the first time in my working career, I took this entire holiday week off and it has afforded me the opportunity to reflect on some of the things that awaken my internal sense of gratitude. I’m thankful for a mother and father who sacrificed in ways that I still don’t fully comprehend to give their only son opportunities that neither of them ever had. Even now while my father lies in rest, my mother still hovers, defends and counsels in ways that boggle the mind. Any success that I may achieve in life was definitely catalyzed by such outstanding parents. They are the real MVPs. I’m thankful that those same parents taught me the importance

As a child, I listened to more than my fair share of jazz music. My father had a deep appreciation of those soulful sounds and he was determined to teach me to feel similarly. My first live concert was to see Ray Charles perform and my car rides were filled with Count Basie and Wynton Marsalis. I may never love jazz as much as my father did, but one song will always stand out to me when I hear its fast paced notes floating through the air – Duke Ellington’s jazz standard “Take the A Train.” I’m not sure whether it was the brass section’s forceful overtures or the subtle undertones of the arrangement, but my father and I would

I find the Chinese Zodiac fascinating. Each year is themed based on the characteristics of an animal or creature and even though I don’t understand what each of the individual themes mean, the concept of each year of one’s life having its own character seems well worth exploring. So I took a page out of the book and I’ve dubbed this year, “The Year of the Housekeeper” because I have decided to make my life tidier in a host of different ways. Over the past seven days, I have invested a lot of energy in something that I haven’t done in my apartment in at least three years: decluttering. I’ve gone through every closet, every drawer and every storage area

It's become an annual tradition that I sit and pen a note on New Year's Eve to my students and anyone else that cares to read. In 2010, my sister got married and attending the reception reminded me of something that I often think about in similar situations. If you've ever been to a dinner where counting your guests is critical and order is paramount, then you are familiar with the routine. You walk into a room filled with seats and, at first blush, you think that you can sit wherever you'd like to best appreciate the celebratory comments of the guests of honor, but then you notice that your freedoms are restricted. For over on the little table in

It's the first day of a new decade and I would like to share some thoughts with each of you to approach this hallmark in your lives with a shift in your perspective. The equation in the title of this note may seem counterintuitive, but let me explain what I mean. What would you think of a basketball player who missed 12,000 shots in his career? How about one whose team trusted him to take the game-winning shot 26 times and missed it, costing his team the game in some cases and the championship in others? And let's not talk about the close to 1,500 free throws that clanged off the rim, if they touched it at all. Would you

Every year, I write a note to encourage you to reflect on the past year and to prepare for the new one. This year, I want to offer some more unorthodox advice for success: be a pig. Not a chauvinistic one or a self-centered one. I'm not even suggesting that you take your cues for grooming or conduct from our swinely friends either. Rather, I am recommending that you consider how a pig participates in the average American breakfast. When you consider a typical American breakfast of eggs and bacon, chickens only make a casual contribution. Chickens offer two or three eggs and it costs them nothing - they will live to lay eggs again. They don't put their everything