Andres Marrugo

To acquire good taste seems effortless, yet many spend a lifetime eating overcooked pasta untroubled by it. We learn to cook by imitation, much as we learn to write. But how can we expect anyone to pr…

There are moments in novels that I remember less for what happened than for what passed between two characters. They stay with me long after other parts of the novel have faded; sometimes even after I…

I have been reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky over the past few weeks. More than a novel, it is a psychological journey. Dostoyevsky manages to place the reader inside the mind of a p…

“Why aren’t you doing important work?” — Richard Hamming There is a quote by Søren Kierkegaard that goes something like this: life is understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. I never fully…

I came across the above image today. One of those neat, confident grids listing the “Top 100 novels.” A canon in miniature. Ambitious, serious, well argued. I recognized many of the spines. I have rea…

I’m listening to The Rise of the Novel from The Great Courses—a fascinating journey through a genre we take for granted today, yet which wasn’t always part of our cultural landscape. Many scholars agr…

The quest to find oneself—to find that which moves you, that which makes you you and not anyone else—is, in a way, the shape of one’s true purpose. Often, it is also that which you must keep explainin…

I teach a course on scientific writing for graduate students—an endeavor that, at first glance, might seem quaint in an age where artificial intelligence drafts emails, summarizes research, and even s…

There is something to be said about reading fiction—it is fundamentally different from watching TV, movies, Netflix, or scrolling through Twitter and TikTok. When you read, your mind has to make a lea…

As I was scrolling through twitter, I happened to come across this beautiful thread that spoke of the lessons learned by a researcher while contemplating his research in the grand scheme of things. Th…