Jonah Lehrer Speaks at Stonehill College

By Erin Kelly

EASTON: College students, get your cocktail napkins ready.

Why? Because students will be jotting down countless ideas and information during their time in college, said Jonah Lehrer. It’s in college where you really learn how to think, he said.

Lehrer talked about several thinking strategies during an address at Stonehill College on October 7. First year students of the college were required to read Lehrer’s book, How We Decide, over the summer. The presentation was mandatory for them, but it was also open to the entire community.

Lehrer, a graduate of Columbia University, wrote for many newspapers including The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. In addition to How We Decide, he is also the author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

Dressed in a gray suit and black tie, Lehrer looked professional as he spoke to the audience, mainly college students, about learning how to think.

Lehrer described college as “a glorious feeling…a new way of looking at the world.” College students are exposed to a flood of new ideas, but students will forget nearly all of them, he said.

He proceeded to tell the audience that college helps people learn how to think and gave them six points of advice:

· Be an outsider
· Learn to relax
· Don’t push the fat man off the bridge
· Make friends with lots of different people
· Don’t eat the marsh mellows
· Inhale; breathe it all in

Lehrer talked about each point for a short time, and gave real-life scenarios that most college students could relate to. He made jokes and created an active audience, which made them stay interested from beginning to end.

Lehrer left his audience with one last thought. College is a great place. “You are in the palace,” he said. Students will be writing on many cocktail napkins, jotting down information and ideas they believe to be important, but the best thing to do is to “inhale and take it all in,” Lehrer said.

Kirsten Arvidson, a freshman at Stonehill College, said that Lehrer exceeded her expectations. “He was a lot funnier than what I expected and really interesting.”

Although she had to attend, she felt the experience would be worthwhile.

“We sat near the front so we could hear him, and it was weird to realize that that’s how we actually think,” Arvidson said, referring to Lehrer’s six thinking strategies. It was definitely an hour well spent and I learned a lot from him, she said.

Tara Cantwell, a sophomore at Stonehill, also attended Lehrer’s presentation. “I had read the book, so I was familiar with a lot of the stories he told, but I really enjoyed how he related decision-making to the college experience, especially for first year students,” she said.

Cantwell is a Psychology major and Lehrer’s discussion went right along with what she was learning in class. She found Lehrer to be very scholarly and good with the audience. “I think his presentation was engaging and very enjoyable as well as effective,” she said.