Some pearls of wisdom from Stanford alumni

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What a busy week, last one. We will be writ­ing dur­ing the week about some of the Sharp­Brains events that occured. 

The May/June Issue of Stan­ford Mag­a­zine has a nice sec­tion titled Just One Ques­tion, where a num­ber of Stan­ford alum­ni answer the ques­tion “What do peo­ple in your pro­fes­sion know that you wish every­one knew?”

Some of our favorite answers:

  • Zoe Lof­gren, ’70, rep­re­sents California’s 16th dis­trict in Con­gress. “When all is said and done, the Amer­i­can peo­ple decide the kind of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment they get. It’s large­ly a myth that elect­ed offi­cials dis­re­gard the view­points of their con­stituents. That only hap­pens when vot­ers for­go the oppor­tu­ni­ty to express their point of view or when an elect­ed offi­cial (know­ing­ly or not) is prepar­ing to leave his or her elect­ed office. A dozen unscript­ed, indi­vid­ual let­ters on a sub­ject are enough to gal­va­nize a mem­ber of Con­gress rep­re­sent­ing 670,000 people.”
  • Doug Osheroff, the J.G. Jack­son and C.J. Wood Pro­fes­sor of Physics, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1996. “I wish that more peo­ple had an under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of how sci­ence is done. That is, how sci­en­tists are able to expand the bound­aries of our knowl­edge and at the same time devel­op new tech­niques and tech­nolo­gies that real­ly do ben­e­fit mankind.”
  • Spencer Sher­man, MA ’69, PhD ’71, is a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist in San­ta Bar­bara, Calif. “Psy­chother­a­pists know that it’s okay to be not okay. That every­one suf­fers some­times. That suf­fer­ing is not unend­ing, unen­durable or with­out val­ue. That con­fu­sion and despair have mean­ing, and that out of them wis­dom and com­pas­sion emerge. That help exists and that it is sage to ask for it. That strength can be built and hap­pi­ness learned. That tri­als and mis­takes are nec­es­sary parts of that learn­ing. That there is no life free from pain. That it is the pain that dri­ves the growth. That flow­ers thank the soil from which they rise.”
  • (we are biased here) Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, MBA ’01, MA ’02, is CEO and co-founder of Sharp­Brains, Inc. “Many cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tists wish that more peo­ple knew how flex­i­ble our brains are through­out our whole lives and what a big dif­fer­ence we can make to ensure a healthy, fit, brain and mind. We can exer­cise our brains—not just our biceps.”

You can check more answers to Just One Ques­tion.