PAIGE: Early on in my MIT career, I used a lot of “but” statements. So an example being, I don’t want to stay up until 2:00 AM working on this problem set, but I want to succeed academically. And I really struggled with this sort of rigid thinking until I learned about a skill from dialectical behavioral therapy known as dialecticals, which is this idea that two statements can be true even if they feel like they might negate each other. In particular, they can be true at the same time.
So an example being replacing the “but” in the previous example with an “and”.
I don’t want to be up until 2:00 AM working on this problem set and I want to succeed academically. And this sort of highlights this fact that there are multiple ways to succeed academically. It doesn’t need to be staying up until 2:00 AM.
And it just gives some sense of that flexibility when you change your mindset about how you’re approaching these problems.