<i>The Art of Teaching</i> by Gilbert Highet

I picked this book up after reading an ask.metafilter.com post about teaching methods. Overall, there was little new to me here, though there was much codification of what I knew intuitively. That was was helpful, as it says to me, yes, you are going about it the right way.

So, some of the guidance includes clarity and preparation: make sure you know your material, know how it will be split up and can present it in a clear manner. Another is patience with those who you are teaching, as all topics are not equally understandable to all students. A final one (though not of the complete list) is to lead the students to discovery and stimulate their curiosity by enjoying the subjects and the presentation and by staying dynamic in the class.

Highet present these pieces of advice in an appealing way, using personal anecdotes, some findings of studies and experiences of others (including well-known writers). It gave a dynamic presentation of the information, but caused me to lose the thread of the discussion in some cases.

This is a book to take notes from and is definitely not written int he modern self-help manner with the outline dominating. While such a structure might be helpful in this book to communicate the points, there would be much lost from the dynamism. The book would do well with a summary chapter that gives the details in an abridged form for later reference, as was done in How to Read a Book with much success.

While I won't look to own a copy of this book, I may come back to it again for reference.

<i>Mindless Eating</i> by Brian Wansink

I read about this book somewhere online. Wansink is a food researcher and completes experiments to asses what effects how much and what we eat. The food labs he uses include the standard one-way glass and a full service restaurant on campus.

It is very sobering to see how much influence advertising has on us. I suppose it shouldn't be much of a surprise, since modern advertising has been figuring out these things for a number of years. Wansink gives a number of examples of this: printing the number of servings in large text a package contains causes us to eat less; having an emotion tie to a food influences us like it that much more; etc. He used his lab to prove these and a number of other behaviors that modern humans have with food---a serving is how much we have in front of us (proved, in part, by an experiment with a never-ending soup bowl; that would've been an awesome Course 2 UROP).

Wansik outlines a diet based on this research. The idea is to generally reduce the amount you eat---not drastically, but by only 100 calories a day (i.e. if you normally eat 2100 calories a day, aiming for 2000), otherwise you fell hungry or deprived---to slowly lose weight. Since thought the eating behavior you develop becomes a habit over time, you tend to keep the weight off that is lost in this manner. The goal: mindless weight loss.

The strategies are basic: split big meals; pick two: dessert, drink or appetizer; keep food out of sight and distant from you; use smaller plates; don't eat straight from the bag. I like the advice a lot, as it doesn't tell you: "NO! Don't eat THAT!" You don't have to feel deprived, you just need to adjust your habits slightly to lose weight over th long term.

This book was interesting for three reasons: (1) it offers reasonable advice for a better diet; (2) it explains (at least partly) why we tend to overeat; (3) it includes some great annecdotes about the results of studies completed in Wansink's food labs. An educational, quick read.

8/10

<i>45 Things You Do that Drive your Boss Crazy and How to Avoid Them </i> by Anita Bruzzese

This book was recommended by a career blog for 20-somethings. After my own recent experience of not really understanding what bosses generally want out of employees, I thought it might be a useful read. I was correct. On the same trip to the library, I also picked up Work 101 by Elizabeth Freedman (Ms. Freedman found it necessary to include MBA after her name, which gives a sense of the intended audience for this book).

Work 101 was recommended by the same blog. It focuses almost exclusively on how to behave in the super-corporate setting of trading companies, ad-firms and other places where an MBA is the currency. As a result the advice is all given in this context and it is hard to suss out the information that is relevant to me in my engineering-centric world.

45 Things, on the other hand, looks more fundamentally at problems that occur when people are in subordinate relationships. Most of the recommendations are common sense---use correct spelling in your emails, don't lie, don't argue about politics or religion at work---but are good to be reminded of. Others were suggestions that weren't obvious to myself---watch who you hang out with at work, as bad attitudes can easily rub off, how to stand up to bullies---but make sense now that I've read them.

Overall, what I learned was:

• Be consistent.
  
• Don't be too weird.
  
• Be respectful all the time.
  
• Think for yourself.
  
• Be nice.
  

I'd definitely recommend 45 Things for anyone who, like myself, doesn't always "get" a lot of human interaction stuff, but can learn to. Work 101 is best left for those looking to climb the corporate ladder.