By J. Lai
The week began normally enough. Members of The Renaissance Collective—spread across 5 states and 6 time zones —started receiving unexpected, yet foreseen, gifts in the mail. A spreadsheet with hints about which members might like what things had been circulating. It was titled only "Secret Bunny."
That Friday, we awoke to find the mystery still unresolved, while, over morning coffee, another began to unfold...
It turns out this exceptionally well-curated and talented group of smart generalists also happens to have exceptionally well-curated and generally smart talents (oh yeah, Renaissance Collective):
Comedy writing. Professional submerged confinement. Unprofessional submerged confinement. Olympic figure skating. Veganism. Security architecture.
All of these were topics in the first installment of our Teach Me series, which allows members to share with the RenCo community some of their lesser-known talents. The format was 5 minutes of educational storytelling followed by 5 minutes of Q&A.
We learned a lot. Below are some takeaways from our first six:
Writing Comedy (Alizeh Iqbal)
Surprise is a critical element in comedic storytelling—the punchline should be unexpected.
Good comedy requires vulnerability and a dose of self-realization to be effective.
Comedy should be relatable. We all have ‘watermarks’ from our experiences that we don’t realize we carry with us. A great comedy writer holds these up to the light and reveals them to us.
Captaining a Nuclear Submarine (Steve Weiner)
Expect to become a polyphasic sleeper: "If you're sleeping more than 4 hours at a time, you're stealing."
In these sleeping rotations, up to four people will share a single bed in a configuration called “hot racking,” which describes “the sensation of getting into recently vacated bed linens.”
It's like quarantine, but two months at a time, without seeing the sun.
Freediving (Jonathan Lai)
If you encounter a shark, hold your ground. If it comes at you, boop it.
The longer the breath-hold the more prevalent the visual hallucinations—the most common of which, for divers who black out underwater, is the illusion of having made it back to the surface.
The mammalian dive reflex allows us to function and even survive for many minutes underwater.
Going Vegan (Charles Rubenfeld)
Vegans should reposition from shaming to learning and educating and informing—veganism is a good cause, not a higher ground.
Perfection or desire to adhere strictly to one label shouldn’t get in the way of a good habit. If you need to use a label, find something flexible enough to adhere to.
Changing the culture can have a bigger impact than anything else. Almond milk has done more for the vegan cause than PETA.
Skating in the Olympics (Emily Hughes)
Have a positive mindset. Don’t see failures as definitive: You’re either having setbacks or making progress towards your goal. Have a goal, but be flexible and adapt.
Everyone falls. If you give up, it’s over, but if you bounce back, you can still finish strong.
Play to win. Don’t play to not lose. Sometimes, you need to take risks, even those that increase your chances of failure.
Architecting Security Systems (Ralph Lin)
The more complex the system, the easier it is to break in. One of the "best ways" to take down a security system is to overwhelm it--human guards are often the weak link.
Security is about making it incrementally harder for “lazy” intruders to break in. For example, given two identical houses with FedEx packages in front, a thief will steal the package from the house without the “Beware of dog” sign.
It’s almost impossible to secure a facility from a motivated team with time and resources on their side.
Now that you have some new hobbies planned, be sure to join us for the next edition of Teach Me—where our tasting menu might feature such signature dishes as: Lessons from Professional Poker, 10-Min Abs, Point Systems for Parenting, and Surfing. Sign up by emailing Jen Yip.
Stay tuned for our Mother’s Day Teach Me, where we’ll be diving into lessons we learned from our moms.
And don’t forget to check out our Instagram to see some of our Secret Bunny gift reveals from the past week!