Juan David's Newsletter - January 3, 2021
A Culture of Narcissism, Being More Confident about the COVID Vaccine, and Teaching Myself Calculus
Hello curious people,
I wish you a great year of health, peace, and happiness for you and your family!
As the year ended, it’s important to take time to reflect on what went well and not so well. Why? I want to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them again.
If you were to read this, what would be some of the things you’d like to hear about the world, young people, college, my progress, failures, goals, etc? Reply to this email to share your thoughts.
Joined Us Recently? - Welcome! Really excited to have you! You can read past emails here.
Curiosities
1. Teaching Myself Calculus
I’m almost done teaching myself the first part of Calculus. In this video, I share why and how I’ve been doing this.
I also share tips on how you can learn to teach yourself anything you want. In the future, I see more and more people having to teach themself knowledge, and those who are able to keep up won’t be at risk.
2. A Culture of Narcissism
Easily one of the best books I read in 2020!
It helped me understand our culture not by looking at ourselves but by looking at ourselves in a mirror and having someone tell us why we’re behaving the way we’re behaving.
I redefined a lot of my thoughts on topics such as:
Why Living in the Present Isn’t So Good
What Advertising is Really About
Why Sports are like a Drug
What Modern School Teaches People
What Achievement Looks Like in a Narcissistic Society (aka our society)
If you want to learn more about yourself and our culture, and most importantly avoid falling into modern social traps, I can’t recommend this book enough!
3. Ego is The Enemy
This was a gift by someone who I really admire because of how much she’d care about me to have the courage to say, “Hey Juan David, I think you’re going off tracks.”
This is a book about fighting our greatest opponent. Ego is an issue I wasn’t aware of and an issue with the potential to destroy me and tear me apart to pieces.
The idea that most impacted me was by believing you’re above average or thinking of yourself as good at X, you lose the sense of reality and can no longer improve.
I learned that I should always remain with a Student Mindset who has the humility to say, “I don’t know. How can I learn this?” and Make a Canvas for Others, which talks about the idea of helping yourself by helping others first.
I’m grateful to be have learned about this, and even more excited to learn to balance confidence and humility.
4. Reasons to be More Confident About the Vaccine
Matt Ridley shares why the chances for harmful side-effects are small. He explains:
Three reasons: the trials were actually longer and had more participants than normal; we know more about how to avoid damaging side effects than we did in the past when mistakes were more common; and the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are neither alive nor contain any proteins, just RNA (DNA’s slightly heavier cousin), so there is less to go wrong.
5. COVID Vaccinations
I’ll be frequently checking out this website about the progress of vaccinations throughout the world.
This website shows 1) The number of people who have been vaccinated, 2) Daily vaccination rates, 3) Vaccination policies, and more.
Thank you for reading my work in 2020, and I hope to have you onboard in 2021!
To thank you, I compiled the 7 most popular essays I wrote last year. Check them out here.
Thanks again, and here’s to an EXCELLENT year!
Take care,
Juan David Campolargo