First of all, I’m spending some time getting ready for my TED talk, and watching a TED talk that has been assigned as class reading for the second time in my academic career. Impressive credentials I’d say, especially since both courses are completely different from each other – one being a higher education course and the other being african american literature.

I love this video, and I did the first time that I was assigned it in a course about African American literature with Fred D’Aguiar about 2 years ago. This year, Claire Robbins assigned it in our Student Development Theory course.  Enjoy, and let me know what you get out of it. To me, the most direct and significant take away is the following –

“When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.”

It’s a universally applicable ideal that transcends disciplines in my opinion. It doesn’t even need to be academic – if we used this perspective in all of our everyday lives, we’d be so much better off.