Ask Sal Anything! Homeroom with Sal - Tuesday, October 19

Hi everyone, welcome to today's homeroom live stream. Uh, today it's just going to be me, so we're going to do another ask me anything. So if you have any questions for me, literally about anything, start putting them on the message boards on Facebook or YouTube, wherever you're watching this. We have team members who will surface the questions to me, so please start thinking about those.

But before we jump into the ask me anything, I'll give my standard announcements. Reminder that Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization, and we can only exist on donations from folks like yourself. So if you're in a position to do so, please think about going to khanacademy.org/donate and making a donation. You know, our last guest, where we talked about what makes folks happy, one of the things that can actually make you a happier person is giving to others. So when you donate to Khan Academy, that is going to give to many, many, many other folks the power of their potential, their education. It's going to make you a much happier person because of it.

I'd also like to give a shout out to several corporations who I'm guessing are also now happier corporations because they've stepped up, as Khan Academy had to step up during COVID. Our costs went up, our server costs went up; we've been trying to accelerate programs, and they helped us fill this gap. But we still need more help. Special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, and Novartis.

I also want to remind folks about Homeroom with Sal, the podcast. It's a podcast version of what we're doing right now, edited down a little bit for podcast purposes, and it's safe to consume while you're driving or doing other things that you might need your eyes for. So check that out wherever you find your podcasts.

With that, let's get into the ask me anything, and there's one that we got a little ahead of time from Dulce Castro Garcia. This was actually, I think, on the last one from Thursday, but I figure it's a good place to start. Dulce wrote, "Mr. Khan, until this live stream, I didn't know who had made the platform I love working on so much. How did you get the idea to make the platform or what inspired you? Thank you so much, I'll make sure to donate."

Well, Dulce, thank you so much that you enjoy working on Khan Academy. You know, a lot of folks talk about people having a growth mindset, and people with growth mindset are constantly challenging themselves and pushing their boundaries. People with growth mindset are also disproportionately successful in life. The fact that it sounds like you like going to Khan Academy, challenging yourself, and keep pushing the boundaries of your knowledge, I think will hopefully say a lot about you and hopefully will be a small part in you becoming an incredibly empowered person. And thanks for the willingness to donate if you're in a position to do so.

In terms of where the inspiration for Khan Academy came from, you know, it goes pretty far back. The Khan Academy immediately started getting worked on in 2004 when one of my cousins needed help. I was an analyst at a hedge fund at the time; my original background was in math and computer science, and I had worked in tech as well. I started tutoring her. Word spread through my family that free tutoring was going on. I soon found myself tutoring 10 to 15 cousins around the country. I started writing software for them because I saw a common pattern: they all had gaps in their knowledge. I wanted some ways for them to practice and fill in those gaps, and for me as their teacher or tutor to monitor what they were doing, so that when we got on the phone, we could dig a little bit deeper.

That was the first Khan Academy, that exercise platform I wrote for them, and it actually still is the core of Khan Academy—the notion to be able to practice and get as much feedback as you need. Then it was a friend in 2006 who suggested that I make videos to supplement the exercise portion of Khan Academy and upload them onto YouTube. I thought it was a horrible idea. I told them YouTube is for cats playing piano, not serious mathematics. But I got over the idea that it wasn't my idea, and I gave it a shot.

You know, my cousins famously told me they liked me better on YouTube than in person; take that how you will. What they were saying is that they really appreciated having an on-demand version, an infinitely repeatable version of their cousin that they could watch in the middle of the night, no judgment. But they still enjoyed having the phone calls with me. Then it became clear people who were not my cousins were using this resource—not just the software but the videos as well. By 2009, I had set up Khan Academy as a not-for-profit organization.

To be clear, what a not-for-profit is: no one owns a not-for-profit. I don't own Khan Academy; you own as much of Khan Academy as I own of Khan Academy. None of us own it; it's really for society. But I set it up as a not-for-profit, and I said, "Well, you know, the social return on investment on this, you know, the social impact could be through the roof." I set it up with the mission of free world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Even though at that time there were about 50 or 100,000 folks using it, I imagined—and I was operating out of the same closet where I am now—that maybe one day it could be millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions of folks.

So I quit my day job and tried to find philanthropic funding for it. That first year was a very tough year. I think any time you do anything entrepreneurial, you almost have to have that delusional optimism: assume that people are going to step up and realize what you think you realize. But it always takes a little bit more time than you suspect, and so it was actually very stressful—in 2009, you know, our first child had just been born, our expenses went up, my wife was still in training to be a physician. So it was hard. But as we got kind of month nine, month ten, then some plans started to come out of the woodwork, and then by that fall, some major foundations, Google.org, the Gates Foundation, stepped up for us to become a real organization.

So that was really the genesis of Khan Academy; it's been a ongoing ride ever since. You know, it's all because of support from both the large foundations and corporations and folks like yourself that make this possible. Because, you know, right now we're only really throttled back by how much resources we can apply to this problem that affects all of humanity. But thanks for that question, Dulce.

Then, let's see from YouTube, Anuj Bhagwan says, "You can be a billionaire, but you're doing free. What is your source of energy?" Anuj, um, I guess you're making an allusion to like maybe if Khan Academy was for-profit, you know, I would own some of it and it could go public, and maybe it would be worth billions, maybe. You know, I did the thought experiment back when I was deciding whether to make Khan Academy for-profit or non-profit. I live in Silicon Valley, and so there were some venture capitalists who were reaching out at the time and saying, "Hey, our kids use Khan Academy; we think you're onto something. We'll write a quick check for you right now; you can quit your job, start doing it, and we think this could be a really successful edtech for-profit company."

It was tempting because I could immediately work on it. Maybe if it's successful, I could be a billionaire, which, you know, I could dress better, etc. But then when I really thought about, you know, what would I do with a billion dollars, uh, you know, yes, I would probably maybe dress a little bit. I probably wouldn't even dress any better. I would, uh, you know, I have everything I need. Even back then, I kind of had everything I needed. I have a wonderful family, a smart, beautiful, amazing, intelligent wife. I have now, at the time, I had one son, but now I have two sons and a daughter. They're incredibly fun and give me incredible energy and contentment.

You know, if you have those things, and if you have enough resources to pay your mortgage, go on vacations every now and then, go to a restaurant every now and then so you're not struggling financially—which, you know, growing up, I grew up, you know, my mom raised us by herself and she worked a lot of minimum wage jobs, so I know how hard it is when you struggle financially—but if you're not struggling financially, if you have your base necessities, you know, we have two Hondas. You know, what else could I want? And Panda doesn't even pay me; I'm just, I just keep buying Hondas.

I'm not trying to be some type of social media influencer; I've just always been kind of a fan of Hondas. They haven't let me down. But I was like, you know, what would I do with more money? I would probably just donate it all to an effort like Khan Academy. And so, why wait for that? Just do it in reverse: do the philanthropy in reverse, just go straight to the not-for-profit, and then try to find other folks who are aligned to help fund it. You know, I do collect a salary from it; everyone at Khan Academy, we're paid to do what we do. But obviously, we're not paid in stocks; we're not gazillionaires and billionaires and all that.

But I'm very happy with that trade-off personally in life. You know, we had Francis Ford Coppola on several months ago, and he brought up this term called, you know, in life a lot of people are trying to become millionaires or millionaires are trying to become billionaires, but he coined a new term called sufficient air. That's when you have enough. If you think about, if in your mind you're a sufficient heir, you're actually the wealthiest of all. Because I know people who are probably worth a billion who want to be worth 2 billion, and they're kind of waking up in the middle of the night like how am I going to make that next billion. But if you're a sufficient heir, then you have enough.

And I consider myself a sufficient heir. I have hopefully reasonable financial security; I have all what I need, and I get to work on a mission that is really that I care about. I get to work with incredible people; I get to do goofy things like these AMAs every now and then as part of my job. It's intellectually challenging, so you know, what else could I ask for? So I have no regrets at all.

So let's see, from YouTube, Kade Heplerman says, "What makes you most proud of with Khan Academy?" You know, when I meet folks either virtually or I meet them in person and they say that it's had an impact on their life, you know, I've gone through airport security, and you know, the person who's walking me into the scanner all of a sudden says, "Hey, you look familiar." And they hear me talking like, "You sound a lot like that Khan Academy guy." And I'm like, "Well, I am the Khan Academy guy."

Then they'll start talking about, you know, how it helped them—how it got them through high school or how it got them through college—and it feels really good to have that type of feedback, to hear those stories when you're doing an otherwise not pleasant thing like trying to check into airport security. So that general, you know, and we get letters all of the time, and that really is what gives me a lot of energy and gives me a lot of satisfaction.

You know, I tell this to the Khan Academy team all the time, you know, these are the stories we hear about, but we know that there's tens of millions of folks on the platform. So, you know, that there's literally stadiums full of people right now who are learning or tapping into their potential because of Khan Academy that might not have otherwise been able to. For me, I just think about all of that human potential that is growing and growing, I remember reading a story about Warren Buffett.

This was well before I started Khan Academy, but they asked him about his investment in Gillette, which makes shaving razors, and he says, you know, "I sleep very well at night just imagining all the hair growing on all the men's faces around the world." And that's just going to drive the profits of Gillette. Well, you know, my analog is I go to sleep, and I just imagine all of the people who are not, their hair is growing, but their intellect is growing, their neurons are connecting because of Khan Academy, and hopefully, their self-esteem is growing because they're able to tap into their potential.

And you know, I don't think there's anything more exciting than that. And selfishly, all of you who are growing intellectually and your self-esteem and your confidence is growing, you're going to do amazing things. Many of those things are going to benefit all of us, including me. So it'll all come back, you know, what are you going to find—a cure for some disease or, you know, solve climate change or part of it or, you know, write the next great novel? And hopefully, if Khan Academy plays a little small part of it, that'd be incredible.

Let's see, from Facebook, Patrick Breslin asks, "How can we improve the online learning classroom experience, ideas and improvements in 2020 and beyond?" Well, there are some high-level things that actually don't need technology. I think when you're doing, I think the interactive live video conference is crucial, especially if you're doing distance learning. Now, to be clear, I don't think distance learning is optimal—100% distance learning is not optimal for most people, including for myself. You need to be in a classroom, interact with people, see body language; that stuff is super powerful.

But there are, I mean, obviously, during COVID, we have to do distance learning, and then beyond COVID, there could be spaces for it where it gives you access to courses that might not be available in your school or connect to students who you might not otherwise be able to connect with. But whenever you're doing anything distance, especially video conference, you got to make it as interactive as possible. I mean, if I just lecture to you all right now without looking at your questions, it might as well be a video.

Ideally, if we're all really live on a video conference, you know, I should be asking you all questions and seeing your responses, putting you into breakout sessions, being creative on the use of time. Instead of 60 minutes with 30 kids, why not six 10-minute sessions with five kids each so you can get a little bit more personalization? Break it up every now and then with fun activities—close your eyes and, you know, draw an elephant and then share it with everyone, maybe in a breakout session. Those are the types of things that when we see are done well make it really engaging.

Frankly, everything I just said are also good practices in a physical classroom: make it as interactive as possible, human to human. From YouTube, Hari Aburu says, "How did you manage to upload millions of videos helping millions of people?" Well, you know, Hari, to be clear, Khan Academy is much more than just me. I haven't uploaded millions of videos personally; I have made thousands of videos. I think it's probably about six or seven thousand at this point, and you know, it seems like a lot, but when you look at how many days in the year there are, I've been making videos for about 14 years now.

Yeah, you can get several thousand. If you think about, yeah, you know, if you say roughly over 10 years, 7,000 videos—I mean, I've been doing it for a little bit more than 10 years, you're looking at about 700 videos a year. If you think I've been doing it for about 12, 13, 14 years, it's a little bit lower—maybe 500, 600 videos a year. So that's averaging about, you know, there's about 250 workdays, so I'm averaging about two to five videos per workday. I still make videos; I made one this morning. I still haven't uploaded it yet; it's coming—it's the Simpson's diversity index in biology, of how do you quantify diversity in a population.

Let's see, so Hari asks another question: "What do you think is the hardest topic in mathematics?" You know, what I found is any topic in mathematics—it can sometimes seem hard at first because it's kind of stretching your thinking. It's making you visualize things in a different way, or it might even be things that you find trouble visualizing. Like, you know, I remember the first time, you know, in linear algebra, you do the—you know, you start generalizing this notion of two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and then you go to n-space, that you can have an arbitrary number of dimensions.

Then you can essentially do linear algebra within those arbitrary number of dimensions, and mathematically, you can come up with some really interesting conclusions about things or insights about things. At first, I remember thinking, how do I think beyond three dimensions? I mean, maybe we can think in four dimensions if you include time. But, you know, the more you get familiar with it, your brain—it is true the human brain cannot really visualize through four dimensions, or definitely not five dimensions, but you can start to think about how it works, and actually, the math can help you think about what would it be like to experience if we had four spatial dimensions or five spatial dimensions or things like that.

So, you know, I think—and there's other topics in mathematics that can be very abstract, you know, it might seem very esoteric. But what I found is the more in any subject—not just math—that you really apply yourself to it, you allow your subconscious to ponder a little bit, give yourself some time and space; at some point, those connections are going to happen. I'm actually convinced anything that is understandable by any other human being is actually understandable by any other human being, just given enough time.

You know, if you go back a thousand years, things like algebra were considered like super advanced; you know, like only the elite of the elite mathematicians—you know, Al-Khwarizmi famously is the one who really invented algebra. Algebra is, you know, it comes from Arabic, you know, and this was kind of in the golden age of kind of Islamic mathematics. I think it coincides with the famous library in Baghdad. So back then, for much of the world, this was like super advanced stuff. I think this was in the 11th or 12th century.

But you fast forward today, we expect, you know, pretty much, you know, you start learning algebra in sixth grade, you know, 11 or 12 years old, and you really are supposed to master algebra—at least the core of it—by the time you're in ninth or tenth grade. I think, you know, even things like tensor analysis or topology or, you know, I could come up with some of these abstract things, I think over time they're going to become more and more common for more and more people to really understand these things.

So from YouTube, Sudhir Yadav says, "How could I balance my life between monthly exams and what I really want to do in life?" Good question. And I would say, you know, the key is balance. No matter what stage of life you're at—whether you're a student and you have to take your exams and study for them, or whether you're working and you have some passions you want to work on—if you really determine yourself and say, "Look, I am going to set aside x hours a day, maybe it's only an hour a day, two hours, or maybe it's only three hours on the weekend to do this thing I care about," you should be able to do it.

There's a lot of stuff we do when we're procrastinating—not efficient use of time—that when we really think about it and, you know, reflect on it, we're like, it really doesn't make us feel good. Let me focus that energy on the stuff that I really want to work on. And you know, I say this because Khan Academy wouldn't exist. Y'all heard the story of how it started. If I said I’m a hedge fund analyst, that's all I'm going to do, my cousin needs help, but I'm going to ignore her, Khan Academy exists because I had a—you know, I said I'm going to—this is important to me, I'm interested in tutoring, I want to help my cousin, and I'm curious about the broader problem of education, let me carve out some time for this.

And you know, when you do that, you think it might affect your day job, but in a lot of ways it doesn't, and it actually makes you better at your day job because then when you go to your day job, you're more energized, recharged, and you're used to thinking in kind of different ways. So even now, you know, there's a million things I want to get done with Khan Academy, and when Friday afternoon or evening comes around, I'm like, maybe I should just work through the weekend and crank that stuff out. But I remind myself that if I do that, I'm just going to deplete myself and actually probably make be less effective in my role at Khan Academy and that, you know, I should invest that time, be present for my own needs, for my wife's needs, and for my children's needs.

Um, so that one—it's for them, but also for myself. You know, I think no one on their deathbed wishes that they had worked for their job a little bit harder. Everyone on their deathbed, I think, or a lot of folks when on their deathbed, when you're in your, you know, hopefully a long time from now, they say, "Oh, I wish I spent more time with my family; I wish I invested more in my passions; I wish I, you know, when my kids were young, I really appreciated them." You know, I look at videos now of, you know, my kids are eleven, nine, and six, and I look at videos from even four or five years ago when they were younger, and I was like, "Man, they were these little chunky monkeys; how come I didn't squeeze them all day?" Then I remember how tiring it was as well, so I was probably just tired.

But I remind myself that in five years, when I see videos of my own kids today, I'm like, "Oh, look how cute and adorable they were; they were so fun and curious." How come you ignored them when you were trying to write that, you know, memo to whatever? And so I just remind myself all the time it's all about balance and making and, you know, really prioritizing your inner self, your family, and your friendships so that they don't get lost. And it's not going to hurt, you know, your other things you have to do, whether it's academics or a job.

So let's see, YouTube, Susana Garcia Dominguez—you know, I don't want to have favorite question askers, but Susana has consistently asked some very good questions. So not to make any—I make all of y'all feel bad; I haven't seen the question she's going to ask. So, "Hello Sal, thank you for having homeroom today. I was wondering about MIT: do they have a big endowment? What scholarships are best to apply for? What is the best way to fund MIT?" I'm assuming fund as a student if you want to go because MIT is a reasonably wealthy university; they have a—I don't know what their endowment is today, but it's in the billions of dollars.

So, uh, but you know they do great things. So if anyone's thinking about funding MIT, you know, they do some incredible research. So I'm a big fan; that's where I went to college. I'm guessing that's why Susana is asking me about that. But what scholarships are the best to apply for? What is the best way to fund—I'm assuming going to MIT. So you know, when I was in high school, my mom didn't make a lot of money. I think she was making, I think, five dollars an hour, which even in, you know, the 1990s was not a lot of money; it was minimum wage.

And my older sister actually applied to Brown University, which is another very good university, Ivy League university. I remember when she was applying, I was like, even if you get in, how are we gonna—we can't afford going there. At the time, I think Brown's tuition was twenty thousand dollars a year, which was more than my mother made in a year. And then room and board would have been another ten thousand dollars a year. So back then, it would have been about thirty thousand dollars a year. Now, these places are fifty, sixty thousand dollars a year in some cases.

And then my sister told me, "You know, Sal, there's this thing called financial aid." And if you get into some of these universities—not all universities have them—but universities like Brown, universities like MIT that have reasonable sized endowments, they first of all try to be need-blind, or I think they are need-blind when they look at an applicant, so they're not looking at you, whether you’re going to be able to pay or not. And then, if you get admitted, they try to make it so that you can pay.

Actually, and so when I was—you know, my sister was able to, you know, get, she had a good bit of loans, but then she also had a lot of grants from school, and then she was able to go. And so that made me realize, oh wait, maybe I could also think about—I always thought it was my dream when I was young to go to MIT. A little bit arbitrary. I remember when I was seven years old, my uncle, who was in his 20s at the time at the University of New Orleans, he was a college student and he was doing his calculus homework. And I was like, "What is this?" He was like, "This is calculus." I'm like, "What is calculus?"

And he's like, "Well, it's a little complicated." Like, explain it to me. And then he explains, and he's like—I was like, "Why do you need to learn calculus?" He's like, "Well, I want to become an engineer, and then I'll be able to do x, y, and z, you know, make things." And I said, "Then I want to become an engineer," and then he said, "Then you should go to MIT." He doesn't remember saying that, but I remember saying, "Okay, I will go to MIT." I didn't know what it stood for; I didn't know where it was. But something clicked in my brain at seven years old, and when I saw that my sister kind of pioneered that, like, oh, there's this thing called financial aid, that gave me the confidence to apply.

And even that, I realized at the time, was a little delusional; no one in my high school had ever gone to MIT, and they only, you know, were accepting at the time, five or six people from the state of Louisiana, and I did not go to one of those fancy schools. But you know, somehow I got in, and they gave me a, I thought, a very generous financial aid package. So I did have debt; you know, I had like thirty thousand dollars of debt when I graduated. My, and you know, but for the most part, all the contribution came from me and my work study, and my mom didn't have to contribute much.

My understanding now, a lot of these schools, if your family makes, I believe it's below seventy-five thousand dollars a year, it's essentially free. And I think in some cases, if your family makes below one-hundred twenty-five thousand or one-hundred fifty thousand dollars a year, it's still heavily subsidized. So any of you all thinking about going, it's not just MIT or Brown, there's probably, there's a lot of universities. Look into it that give need-blind admissions and give very generous financial aid, so don’t let your family's finances narrow the aperture of where you might want to go to college.

Let's see, from Facebook, Maya Campbell asks, "If you weren't leading Khan Academy, what do you think you'd be doing instead?" Um, so there are a bunch of projects that I think in the education space generally I've always been interested in the stuff we're doing at Khan Academy. Some of y'all know I've been working on this project at schoolhouse.world, very complementary to Khan Academy around peer-to-peer tutoring, although I view that as all part of the same broader mission. You know, ways for students to know what they know so that they can approve it. You know, college, you know, for things like college admissions, uh, near Chicago just announced a couple weeks ago that they were going to use these schoolhouse.world certifications for admission cycle this year.

So, you know, I think I’d be drawn—I even was working at the hedge fund; I was saying I’ll start a school one day if I'm able to make enough money in the hedge fund because I always thought it would be fun to be a Dumbledore-type figure. So I think I would be doing something in education eventually. If you're saying, if I wasn't working in education at all, what would I be doing? You know, maybe I would have studied in the hedge fund world to some degree, and you know, tried to become—but even then, I would have viewed that as a means to an end, and you know, I think my biggest interests are, I mean, my general interest is in human potential.

And so that's why I'm so interested in education. And then, you know, a more recent passion that I've really been developing, y'all have heard me talk about it on this live stream, is just kind of going on an inward journey, like understanding who we are as sentient beings. And so that's why I've been meditating a lot; I've been actually investing time to get to know my friends better. We meet on Sundays and we have these, and now we do it on Zoom where we have these conversations about, you know, what does it mean to be a good person and how what's perception versus reality and things like that.

So maybe I would have become some type of, you know, community builder-type person. Who knows? I also like, you know, on the side, I think I'm always drawn to kind of real estate; maybe I would have been some type of like, you know, home fixer-upper. There's something very tangible about that, like that's just a random— that's just a random other interest that I might have had. A lot of my friends know anyone who I know who wants to buy a house, they turn to me right now; I'm like their shadow real estate broker because it's just kind of a fun thing that I like to do when I'm procrastinating.

So Fatah Bobber is asking from YouTube, "How do I learn how to teach?" Well, the best way to learn anything is to keep doing it, getting feedback, and really processing that feedback. My general, you know, if I were to give, I haven't thought a lot about this, but you know, step one: learn the material really, really well yourself. Not only so that it's really intuitive for you, but you're excited about it. Because if you don't have excitement, if it's not intuitive to you, it's going to be very hard to convey the excitement and the intuition to someone else. So that's step one.

The second thing is, you know, try to build the empathy of really putting yourself in the mind of the person you're trying to explain to. Don't try to force the knowledge into them; cater to their needs, be as empathetic as possible, you know, be as patient as possible, try to meet them where they are, and just be conversational. You know, don't talk down, don't talk above them; just say, "Look, we're just two souls trying to understand this, you know, I just happen to know it already and let's see how I can help you."

I think if you have that kind of relaxed but still passionate and very intuitive angle on something, people are going to really enjoy, you know, learning with you and going on a learning adventure. That's my gut sense. Time's going by fast; let me do a couple more questions.

Which skill do you think is the most useful for the future? This is from Kuram Amir Mazar from Facebook. The, you know, the meta-skill is the ability to learn things. You know, the one thing we know about the next century is that the rate of change is only going to accelerate. You know, there's these famous stats—I don't know how they come up with it—that the majority of the jobs that all of y'all are going to have, you know, 10, 20, 30 years from now don't exist yet today. So we don't even know what those jobs are.

And so the real skill you learn is how do you—how do you pull knowledge? And the beauty is, right now on the internet, through Khan Academy and other things, the knowledge is all there. There are a million ways to learn the skills, and so you just have to get good at doing it. So when you're on Khan Academy, yes, you can learn to factor a polynomial and you can learn about photosynthesis and you can learn about the American Revolution. But—and that's all important content to learn and skills to learn—but that meta-skill of learning to go learn at your own time and space and using tools at your disposal to do so, that's really an incredible skill.

And, you know, and based on the last question, I think the ability to teach others is an incredibly valuable skill. Not just for becoming a teacher; if you think about what a good manager does in a corporation, they're good supporters and teachers and mentors of other people. That's what—you know, you need to communicate when you teach; you need to empathize when you teach; you need to inspire when you teach. And if you think about those three things, they're completely synonymous with leadership or any type of entrepreneurship as well.

So I would say the ability to teach and the ability to learn new things. Let's see one more question, or maybe I'll do two real fast. From YouTube, MMBl, they say, "Khan Academy's a great area for SAT prep. I really need to raise my score 200 points or more. What do you advise me to do?" You know, if you go on Khan Academy, use the official SAT practice, which we have in partnership with the College Board. And you put in—I don't know when you plan on taking the SAT. I'm guessing you might be a sophomore or junior; it's a little late now if you're applying for college right now, but maybe you are. No, don't stress.

But, you know, I would put in 20-30 minutes a day, you know, maybe four or five days a week. And you know, we actually have done research: if you follow the recommendations on the official SAT practice, the stuff that the software is saying you need to work on, you really focus on leveling up your skills to higher and higher levels on it, and you once and every now and then take full-length practice tests in as realistic format as possible, we see in the data that that's really going to drive a lot of growth.

And especially if you have some time before your SAT and you just make a habit—20-30 minutes a day, follow the recommendations, work on what you need to work on, take those full-length practice tests, I think in a few months, you're going to see pretty noticeable gains. And if you have even more than a few months, I actually feel pretty confident you'll be able to, you know, reach your goals. Maybe it'll happen sooner, and then we're all over time.

This one from YouTube, Aten Mera says, "How do you have so much depth of knowledge in almost most domains? It seems to be quite extraordinary for a single person to do." Well, I appreciate that you feel that I have this, you know, this depth. And you know, look, that is one of the things that why I feel lucky to have this job—that I get to exercise that depth in many domains and then communicate it to other folks. But you know, I think we're all just curious beings in this thing we call life, in this universe that we're trying to understand.

And almost all knowledge is just trying to make sense of who we are and what the universe is all about. What I found is if you can draw connections in one domain, it translates into other domains more than you might suspect. I think in a traditional school system, we silo the subject so much that you don't realize that you know, ways that of learning and ways of connection in your brain are not as siloed as you think. It's not like your brain has like a math section and then separately a physics section and then separately an art section; you know, these neurons are all jumbled together.

And so for me, it's very fun to ponder things, to learn things, to be able to communicate things. And I think if you just have the mindset for yourself, like I'm just going to keep learning, and I'm just a curious person, and I too want to learn everything, I think when you're sitting, you know, in your mid-40s on a live stream and your beard is growing a little bit, you know, people will be sending you questions like you just sent me.

So thanks everyone for, for this is always super fun, these ask me anythings. A couple of announcements: tomorrow, October 22nd, I don't know what day is today, is today the—no, that's the day after tomorrow. We're going to have a motivation webinar from Kristen Deservo, our chief learning officer. I highly recommend this; Kristen is great. She is an expert on all things learning, and she is also very engaging herself. So I encourage parents to check out this webinar on how to motivate middle and high school kids during distance learning.

Also want to remind folks that tomorrow we're going to have Pedro Noguera, the dean of the University of Southern California's Roster School of Education. So start thinking of questions for Dean Noguera; that's going to be a great conversation. So everyone, thanks for joining. These ask me anythings are always fun, and I will see you tomorrow. Onward!