t-direction : "t "stands for Taste, not Technology

Having "t "stand for Taste, not Technology, doesn't mean that we are downplaying the importance of technology.

Out term "Taste" has less to do with beauty, elegance, grace, poise, aesthetics or other such concepts, and more with judgement.

Let's consider an example which on the face of it has the least to do with taste. Say, military weapon systems. If you choose something unreliable, not sturdy and robust, or something hard to integrate, hard to upgrade, hard to replace, whatever you choose will turn out "ugly." Not necessarily the systems look ugly. Nonetheless, it will feel ugly.

When your taste has been properly developed in an area, you even lose desires for distasteful stuffs. We all read Marvel, Spider man, batman comic series when young. But once we outgrew these cartoons, we may read them once in a while for nostalgic reasons, but not as seriously, as zealously as in youth. They cannot satisfy our intellectual, emotional, aesthetic needs any more. Our taste has matured with our physical age.

The same holds true for any are of life.

Taste, like Direction, is a bit subjective. We at EssayKKN, have no intention or desire to impose our taste standards on our students. They develop their tastes, and set up their own taste standards just as they draw their own road map and choose their own direction and pace/rate to proceed.

Fashion, Fad and Fantasy and Meditation

There is a report on resilience and how mindfulness practices can help us with bouncing back, in Time magazine (June 1, 2015, page-30). Original article is titled "The Science of Bouncing Back".

In one research reported in that article, Martin Paulus (scientific director and president of the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Okla.) trained four Marine infantry platoons in an eight-week mindfulness course and four platoons trained as usual. Then both groups took part in a very stressful series of war games.

After these exercises, the researchers checked the mental states of both groups and found out that the Marines who had taken mindfulness course proved more resilient. Brain scans even showed their brains had undergone a structural change, for the better. Another source about Marines and Meditation is "US Marines May Be Adding Meditation To Their Pre-Deployment Arsenal".

To confirm their findings, these researchers went on to train some Olympic BMX athletes in mindfulness, who went on to win at a major BXM competition the gold, silver and bronze medals.

Some more miraculous claim shows up near the end of the report:

"Another recent study shows that meditation can even help decrease expression of pro-inflammatory genes."\

Maybe soon they may claim that the Mindfulness meditation can help you fly, walk on water, cure Ebola and so on.

t-direction from tdcc : Taste, Direction, Creativity and Collaboration

The name of the site "t-direction" came from from "tdcc" which stands for Taste, Direction, Creativity and Collaboration.

They are a subset of soft skills, which also include Trust, Communication (Story-telling), Curiosity, Grit, Flexibility among others. We cannot accept equalling soft skills with interpersonal skills and EQ as it is too  narrow a definition.

It is fashionable these days to insist that soft skills are more important than hard skills. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that soft skills have never gone out of fashion. They outshine hard skills now, in the Industrial Revolution days, in the Renaissance, in the Roman times and the times before that too.

In soft-skills literature, the term "Direction" has been named variously as "strategic navigation,", "vision," "strategy," "orientation" (after Col. Boyd's OODA terminology) and so on. It is about finding the way forward, making the path forward, blazing the trail towards your destination.

Our human world, human affairs has been complex, chaotic and VUCA at any time in history. No one can chart a road map for our life. The path Andrew Carnegie chose was good for him, but not for his less able father, not even for his one-time mentor!

No one can clone and use another person's road map. Fortunately, path-finding, direction-setting is both innate and learnable. We all know this skill innately to some degree, and we must make the best of what little is innate in us. Moreover, we must develop it further with reading, study, reflection introspection and some formal training.

Finally, essaykkn.appspot.com is the direction if you are learning to write better essays.

EssayKKN : Essay jobs

Why essays?

In the sense that it is highly unlikely that your children will stop writing any one of these once they graduate and start working in the real world, perhaps essay writing is not that important at all.

1. "For all the environmental problems that the world face now, the developed countries should take more responsibility." To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?
2. "I realized at once that the aliens have started invading our planet..." Continue the story.
3. Freedom. 

But what if we define essay-writing, in the spirit of the five canons of Rhetoric as they have been classically defined, as

1. Having ideas
2. Organizing them
3. Expressing them impactfully 

Can you think of any good job which does not involve having ideas, arranging them coherently and sharing them effectively?

Plumber? Shoe shine or repair? Cleaner?

For other types of jobs and careers, you need to check out essaykkn.appspot.com

EssayKKN : Cruel Only to Be Kind, for Better Direction

We recently launched EssayKKN, a web app to help students write better essays. In truth, we teach more than essays. One of our main aims is, as the app's name suggests, to help them find better directions. What happens when you lose your sense of direction?

If we sound mean and malicious, just keep in mind Hamlet, who once famously said, "I must be cruel only to be kind."

1. Other graduates write seminal well-cited, well-regarded papers. Yours write unknown, unheard-of papers.
   
   Okay, we can agree your degrees can be good even if you stop writing papers.
   
   
2. Other graduates write books. (Okay, anyone can get published if they agree to pay. ) Your grads can be only "technical reviewers."
   
   
3. Other BSc get jobs in Google, Yahoo etc. Your PhD's teach in high schools. (Okay, PhDs teaching to KG's is fine and noble.) But your Physics/Math/Chemistry PhD's go on to take half a dozen more Masters in (what!??) archaeology, geology, child psychology, social welfare, education management, financial counselling etc
   
   Degrees unrelated to first degrees.
   
   Degrees that don't help their current jobs and current customers.
   
   Degrees unlikely to find them better jobs or satisfaction.

Why do they study in the first place?

What meaning do they seek and find in their study or learning?

t-direction at essaykkn.appspot.com will help find better directions. Try, see for yourselves!

Decisive Quick-Witted Re-framing

Monkey leaps on a croc posing as a stone in the river

VANARINDA-JATAKA

"Whoso, O monkey-king, like you, combines
Truth, foresight, fixed resolve, and fearlessness,
Shall see his routed foemen turn and flee."

Reference

The Jataka, Volume I, tr. by Robert Chalmers, [1895], at sacred-texts.com
THE JATAKA OR STORIES OF THE BUDDHA'S FORMER BIRTHS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE PALI BY VARIOUS HANDS
UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF PROFESSOR E. B. COWELL.

Undaunted spirit

The story of a forester protecting a group of merchants from 500 robbers

KHURAPPA-JATAKA

"When many a bow the shaft at speed let fly--
Hands grasping blades of tempered steel were nigh--
When Death had marshalled all his dread array--
I felt a great and mighty joy this day.

"And this my joy gave me the victory;
I was resolved to die, if need should be;
He must contemn his life, who would fulfil
Heroic deeds and be a hero still."

Reference

The Jataka, Volume 2, tr. by Robert Chalmers, [1895], at sacred-texts.com
THE JATAKA OR STORIES OF THE BUDDHA'S FORMER BIRTHS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE PALI BY VARIOUS HANDS
UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF PROFESSOR E. B. COWELL.