Sangha of Auspicious Companions

Reviving the Art of Research

While Duke University professor Aaron Dinin is teaching entrepreneurship, he actually teaches young people to have a healthier relationship with failure through various oddball challenges— from solving a 1000-piece puzzle in six minutes to trying to beat a nine-year-old at selling cookies. Dinin’s students recently were tasked with answering as many obscure questions as possible using nothing but the books in their library. Students were given a printed-out catalog of books to help them find the answers to questions like “When was Kentucky founded?” and “What makes Pickett’s Charge important?” Many admitted this was the first time they had ever looked something like this up in a book. Dinin pointed out that as anyone these days would almost certainly just Google this kind of information, “being able to answer questions isn’t nearly as valuable in the modern world as knowing which questions are worth chasing in the first place.” Dinin’s inspiration to create learning such opportunities was “watching brilliant students sabotage their futures because they were scared to be wrong.” To combat that, he decided to design classes that “make failure survivable (and maybe even a little bit fun).”

Be The Change

Organize a phone-free day with friends or family and dive into a local library, discovering answers the old-fashioned way.