Every Wednesday, I collect a number of blog posts that caught my interest in the preceding week. Some weeks, the posts come together from a single theme and other weeks, the collection can be pretty eclectic. This week falls into the latter category. Enjoy!

Leigh Peele is well-respected in her realm of weight loss and she explains how you can become an authority in your field too. The biggest take-home lesson is that you have to accept being different. Exceptional people aren’t exactly normal and that’s why they can be respected as experts.

Therese Borchard takes a moment to tell us something very simple: we fear rest. She mentions “how the Buddhist monks talk about the swinging monkeys of the brain, and how you need to tame them.” Sometimes, we just need to take a step back and relax.

Damien Riley comes from the educational perspective, wondering if the race to the top has become a race with nowhere for our children. This has really come to light with the Waiting for Superman documentary. Is the educational system failing?

Raul Pacheco sticks to the school genre to let us know that he loves academic life. I graduated university five years ago, but I can certainly appreciate why he would love academia. There’s something to be said about being surrounded by all that learning and all those brilliant people.

Dawn Foster realizes that Twitter and Facebook is for so much more than just personal interactions. That’s why we have to learn about how to social media in a professional manner. Know that everything you put out there is very public, very archived, and very much up to scrutiny and controversy.