With all the terrible things that have happened so far in 2016, I am still thankful. 

No matter how grim the future looks when you consider the climate change nay-sayers and the incoming Trump administration, I believe that because we are descendants of pioneers and risk takers we will continue to lead the world as a superpower. Every one of our families at some point were immigrants (except Native Americans) and all of them weathered the discrimination of being “outsiders” to become successful here in the United States of America. 

We are leaders and innovators. Let us not forget our roots and appreciate the diversity that has made us a great country.  Today, I am thankful to have my family, my health, and my future.  Tomorrow, I will fight like hell to make sure that we ward off climate change by getting America, and the world, on board to save civilization as we know it today. 

With Thanksgiving around the corner and Christmas and winter holidays next month, every college-bound senior is stressed out as they scramble through piles of college applications and make important decisions about which colleges they should apply to.

Don’t waste your precious time, and your parents’ precious money, applying to colleges to which you are not be eligible.  Don’t forget these 5 important factors before applying to colleges.

1.  MAJORS: Make sure that the colleges you are considering all offer your top three majors.  You don’t want to change your mind about your #1 major and find that you have to drop out of your college, reapply (YIKES! Anything but that!), move back home, and waste a year in the process!

2.  HIGH SCHOOL REQUIREMENTS: Make sure you’ve taken all of the high school coursework required.  If you haven’t, you still have time to satisfy most requirements.  Many colleges will not accept grades lower than a C-; check your transcript to determine which classes you may need to repeat.

3.  REQUIREMENTS for MAJOR: Make sure that your particular major doesn’t require additional high school classes.  Some majors like finance, for instance, require trigonometry, even when the college itself requires only Algebra II. 

4.  ADDITIONAL APPLICATIONS for the ARTS: Most colleges require an additional application and auditions for music, theater, film and/or art majors.  Some of these applications are due earlier than the regular application so check for these deadlines ahead of time. You should be ready to set up audition dates and prepared to send electronic portfolios.

5.  SAT/ACT/SAT 2/TOEFL REQUIREMENTS: Most selective colleges require either the SAT I or the ACT with Writing AND the SAT 2.  International students need to also take the TOEFL.  Check with each of your colleges to determine what exams are required for admissions.  Most colleges will still accept SAT/ACT/TOEFL scores from December test dates.  Check deadlines online and sign up if you haven’t already done so.

Understanding what is required and what you’ve taken can be confusing. Read college websites or call admissions officers to get accurate information.  Don’t rely on online information that is gathered by third parties because I have found many mistakes and omissions that could be problematic for applicants. 

I just read an interesting study about how obesity is linked to memory loss (University of Cambridge). While the verdict is still out, they’ve found that there is a clear relationship between your Body Mass Index (BMI) and apparent memory deficits.  In other words, the larger your waistline, the smaller your hippocampus (responsible for learning and memory in the brain).

Another study found that people who focused on what they ate during a meal would eat nearly one-third less than those who were distracted by listening to an audio book (University of Liverpool). So these researchers have developed a smartphone app that encourages people to eat more attentively.  Apparently, people who take photos of what they’re eating and answer questions about their meals create vivid memories, which makes them less likely to overeat throughout the day. Hmm. So all those people who post photos of their food on FB were really engaging with their food and losing weight? Guess I should start posting my meals on FB!

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Here are several ways you can get tax relief for college tuition without giving those savings to a CPA! 

American Opportunity Tax Credit
If your child is enrolled in college half-time or full-time for a bachelor’s degree, you may be eligible for $2,500 credit for the first $4,000 you spend on educational expenses as long as your adjusted gross income is less than $80,000 (or $160,000 for married joint filers).

Lifetime Learning Credit
If you make less than $65,000 (or $110,000 for married joint filers), you can get $2,000 off your first $10,000 in tuition expenses.

Tax Deductions for Tuition and Fees
If you don’t qualify for the 2 tax credits above, you may still get a tax break of up to $4,000 for tuition and fees if you make less than $80,000 (of $160,000 for married joint filers). As long as someone else isn’t claiming the student as a dependent, you may qualify for this, and you can claim this even if you don’t itemized your taxes.

Student Loan Interest Deduction
If you earn less than $65,000 (or $160,000 for married joint filers), you may be able to deduct up to $2,500 in student loan interest from your taxable income. And, you don’t have to itemize this on your tax returns.

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Check out opening day for ski resorts!

With all of the depressing news and fear-mongering since the presidential election, I thought I’d blog about something completely random – opening day of ski resorts this season! 

Good news, if you just need a quick get-away, Mammoth just opened on Nov 10^th  , Squaw Valley opened on Nov 11^th , and Heavenly Valley opens today! 

Want to see when the rest of the country opens for skiing and snowboarding? Check out this schedule: http://www.grindtv.com/skiing/early-snow-falls-across-country-ski-resorts-race-opening-day/#cJPxPvGfYDELs5uB.97

It’s time to pull out your skis and snowboards and head to the mountains (either to ski or to re-stock your Apocalypse Bunker – it’s up to you)!

My grandmother, who didn’t speak English – ever — told all of her 11 grandchildren not to send their children away for college because they’ll never return. She was separated from her 2 sons who were studying in Japan when WWII broke out and never saw her eldest son again.  I mused on her advice because I soon moved from Southern California to Santa Cruz to go to college. So when I opened Merit Academy in 1994 to give my girls the best education I could provide, I thought about what she’d said and about being careful what I wished for. 

My grandmother’s words of advice still haunted me but I encouraged my girls to go out to do whatever they believed in.  So Nicole graduated from Merit Academy and went to Stanford, and Jaclyn headed off for Claremont McKenna College.  While they were both still in California, it  worried me that they were moving away from home.  Then, Jaclyn received an amazing job offer in PA and moved across the country, and then Nicole complete medical school at Stanford, and then moved to LA for her residency.  I was proud of my girls but wondered whether we would ever be close again (in proximity).

Two years ago, Jaclyn made the drastic move from PA back to the Bay Area.  It changed everything for us and we’ve come to really appreciate our closeness. Then last week, Nicole made the decision to do her EMS fellowship at UCSF. We are thrilled that she’ll be back home again next summer (2017). It has been 10 years that our girls have lived far away from home, and we are relieved and grateful that they’ve chosen to live close to us, again!  

Did you know that nearly half of all sexual assaults take place during the first few weeks of the school year and that freshmen girls are the most vulnerable?  What an awful way to start college.   Twenty percent of women and 7.5 percent of men report being sexually assaulted while in college. The perpetrators consist of just 10% of the male population and each of these perps commit these crimes about 6 times.  So statistically speaking, if we stop these repeat offenders, we could stop 60% of the sexual assaults on campus. Wow.    The good news is that Jess Ladd, a sexual assault survivor at Pomona College, created an online sexual assault tracker called Callisto to help students report rape and other sexual assaults on college campuses. Her organization, Sexual Health Innovations, gives victims 3 ways to report these heinous attacks: (1) report a sexual assault; (2) record a report and save for later; or (3) report the crime only if other people accuse the same person.  These reports are encrypted until they are shared with the college administrator who handles these cases.     Callisto is being used on several campuses: Pomona College, Univ of San Francisco, Coe College, and Central College. Later this year, Callisto will also be available in Colorado, New York and other states. By making the reporting process somewhat easier and less invasive, more victims will come forward.  By removing repeat offenders from college campuses, Callisto will substantially reduce sexual assaults, and general awareness of Callisto will probably deter first-time offenders. I hope to see Callisto on every school and college campus.    [Source]        

It’s frustrating that no matter what companies say about their “privacy” policies, they all seem to be guilty of using our personal data for their benefit.

Well, Google just alerted customers to the invasive changes by calling them “some new features for your Google account.” Wow, really?

So what is Google doing? According to ProPublica, Google’s privacy policy combines personally identifiable information from your YouTube searches, and Google searches with DoubleClick ad data from the web. 

The good news: You can opt out of Google’s tracking system!

Here’s how:
1.  Go to “My Account”  in your Google account page
2.  Click on “My Activity”
3.  Click on the 3 vertical dots next in the top blue bar of your screen
4.  Click “Activity Controls”
5.  Untick “Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services

There’s nothing better for lifting your spirits than to spend the day with brilliant students who are on a mission to solve arguably the world’s biggest problem: climate change. 

The Kids 4 Hydrogen team toured 3 labs in Silicon Valley to select the best lab to build their Smart Plugs and hydrogen production equipment.  Yup, they’re starting the process to get the job done.  They’re working with Dr. Roy McAlister who has invented a spark plug that will convert an internal combustion engine (ICE or gasoline-powered vehicle) to be a flex fuel engine that runs on Metrol, liquid hydrogen (with nitrogen), or gasoline.  It’s what the students claim is the best, and only, solution that they’ve found that we can implement now to reduce CO2 and our planet’s warming within 10 years — before it’s too late.

So what will Kids 4 Hydrogen do?

The kids plan to make a prototype of Dr. McAlister’s Smart Plug.  Their goal is to demonstrate to the world that our ONE BILLION ICE cars on the road today can be converted to use Metrol to completely stop ALL CO2 from being emitted from every car’s tailpipe.  They know that in 10 years that there will not be enough electric or hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road to reduce any significant amount of emissions because hundreds of millions of ICE cars will continue to spew CO2 into the atmosphere.  Kids are beautiful because they aren’t bought out by big oil companies and they can see the easiest and cleanest solutions as a result.

How can you help?

Help fund their prototype and sign up to convert your car.  They’ll soon have their updated website with information on how to get on a wait list.  This is something you can do.  It costs nothing to get on the wait list and you’ll be privy to the latest developments. Check out www.Kids4Hydrogen.org.

My first encounter with Generation Adderall was with one of my students. She had trouble getting her work done for weeks, and then all of a sudden, she walked into my office with a pile of crumpled papers and told me that she finished all of her late work. After she spent about 5 minutes lying to me about how she just sat down and decided to just do the work, she finally confessed that one of her friends gave her some Adderall – and that it changed her life.

Since then, I cringe when I read about how Adderall is the go-to drug of choice for millennials who are looking to increase their productivity at the office (or in class) and again to party all night. So what’s wrong with Adderall? It’s a drug that is being sold as an off-label stimulant on college campuses. In 2002, 16 million prescriptions were written for Adderall and 116,000 users ended up in rehab to kick the habit.

Rather than use illicit drugs like Adderall to help with focus, energy, and alertness, there are 5 all-natural alternatives.  According to Dr. Ehsan Ali, a concierge doctor in Beverly Hills, these alternatives can work. 

Focus: Protein
Protein in capsule, powder, or tofu scramble (500 mg/day)

Creative Stimulation: Cacao
Raw cacao (2 TBSP/day)

Brain Health: Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Fish, chia seeds, walnuts (or supplements) (2,500 mg/day)

Reduce Implusiveness: Zinc
Spinach, beef, shrimp, or kidney beans (or supplements) (20 mg/day)

Calming: Magnesium
Magnesium supplement

Let me know if any of these alternatives to Adderall work for you. I take protein, cacao, and Omega-3s every day and I feel great. 

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