EconomicsToo

Image source:  Blisstree.com Of the many personal statements written by our year 13s, many I read are scattered with long, complex words, some of which I often do not understand myself! When asked what they mean, it isn't particularly rare to find out the student didn't know either. They often admit to using the synonym feature in their word processor to make them sound 'more intelligent'. It seems, however, that they may be wasting time searching for more imaginative words with the intention of sounding more knowledgable. They may have been far better to keep the simple word after all! Daniel Oppenheimer of UCLA found (in this  study ) that using shorter words actually makes you seem more intelligent and this article explaining Oppenheimer's work by Fast Company gives a great review of the study and the findings. He and his team conducted studies that found that the use of longer words in texts had the exact opposite effect of making you seem smarter to the

I love all the commencement speeches out there. Many often hold nuggets of gold that one can try to implement into their own life and help us to improve... not having attended one of these universities (yet) to hear them live, we can still mine their goodness and enjoy them from the comfort of our own laptop or *insert tech device of choice here*. ...There really are some crackers. Obviously Steve Jobs at Stanford is well up there amongst the best, but this possibly lesser known speech by Neil Gaiman is well worth sharing here. Enjoy