Welcome back friends, to Productivity, Without Privilege. I’m your host, Alan Henry, fresh off of a train back to New York City from visiting my alma mater, and it was a wonderful experience. I know, I really should say something like “oh wow it’s changed so much it reminds me of the good old days” and wax rhapsodic about how things were “back in my day,” but honestly that’s not what I took away at all. Instead, if anything, I was inspired by how much my alma mater has grown and changed over the years.
The new labs, the new research facilities, the new common spaces for students to get together and study and relax, even all the new dining options, all aimed at making their lives—and the lives of their professors and TAs—better. I wholeheartedly love it when people don’t have to suffer the things I did; it means that the changes we requested and the voices we raised were actually heard, and now people are benefiting from those improvements.
I’m normally a pretty nostalgic person, and sometimes like to wistfully think back to my own past, but that’s just what it is, a moment in spacetime long past, inaccessible by the hypersurface of the present, faded well into the back of the light cone in which we all exist. And that kind of brings me to what I want to touch on this week, a good reminder of why it’s so important to focus on right now.
Oh, before I go too far, I want to thank all of the new subscribers! I’ve seen quite a few of you come in lately, and I appreciate every single one of you. And of course, if you haven’t already, please pick up a copy of Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized. I would very much appreciate it, and hey, it might even make a great holiday gift for I don’t know, literally everyone in your life! Buy one! Buy five! Hand em out to carolers!