Eliana Osborn

I’m not there yet. But I need to be honest—I’m closer to 40 than any other multiple of five.

I get how we want to make our kids successful and everything, right from the start. Feeding into the pressure, here’s the tagline from Starling’s company: “The world’s first word-tracking system that can improve your child’s trajectory for life.”

Being a person of faith isn’t cool. It is very personal to me and not something I like to talk about a lot, which goes counter to the whole idea of ‘sharing the good news of the gospel.’

My sister Liz is full of wisdom, like my favorite quote I’ve shared with practically everyone I know: “Every pair of underwear has two good sides.”

It is hard to find any real numbers about how many people do "direct sales" or how much money they make. The web is full of either big promises or pissed-off former sellers. What I do know, from bazillions of friends and family, is that making much more than pocket money means selling like a real job. Yes, it might be more flexible, but there’s no magic formula.

Really, you should thank me. I’m just protecting your future self.

I’m not a fan of repeating things over and over so that they lose their meaning. "Pledge: a solemn promise or agreement." It is that extra level, the solemnity, that makes me uncomfortable with casual usage.

A new, exciting trend is to have food pantries for college students. I talked to an AmeriCorps volunteer running one of these centers and she was matter-of-fact about the need — and how little is being done. Today’s college students may be young and single, living la vida loca. But more and more are what we call ‘nontraditional’: slightly older, employed full-time (or close to it), supporting a family, a veteran, etc.

Hunger for nontraditional students doesn’t mean surviving on ramen: It means they are not the only person in the household who's in need.

Look, Connect Four is not a good game. But it can be over quickly, which is pretty great.

Standardized tests are taking over the world. I can say this because it is true. Like a creeping vine that seems attractive and charming at first, tests appear to be reasonable for the data and direction they can provide.