Mia Lasic-Ellis

Before I came to Bowdoin, I spent my summers teaching kids how to sail, where capsizing a boat was the least stressful part of their week. Kids who were bouncing between foster homes, kids whose household relied on their ability to translate documents, kids who never left their zip code until the yellow, town-provided school buses dropped them off by the docks.

I remember one 11-year-old kid, terrified of the water due to “sharks,” accidentally capsized alone during a drill. My hands were full on the motorboat, so I watched him do the operation we practiced a dozen times: grab the centerboard, pull yourself up and use your weight to right the boat back up. It took him a few attempts—the water does not negotiate—but he did it, shaking and shivering, but nevertheless, grinning.

Nobody had to teach that boy what it means to be resilient. He just had to be.

Now at Bowdoin, I look around and notice my friends reading the same handful of books: “Can’t Hurt Me,” “Atomic Habits,” “Discipline Equals Freedom,” or whatever Andrew Huberman and David Goggins are telling them about discomfort being the price of “greatness.”

I have nothing against self improvement, but I started to wonder if this genre, let’s call it “bro-ish self-help” is actually helpful. Is it teaching my peers what it means to be resilient, or is it just saying to be?

By the time you get to tip number 8, you already forgot 4, 3, 2 and 1. So the next time life throws a challenge, you will fumble if it means relying on that book.

However, let’s switch it up. Let’s say you finished reading “The City of Ember” by Jeanne DuPrau. A simple 350 page read about a city built underground, generations ago, as a shelter meant to keep humanity alive, where the instructions on how to leave are lost when the city’s electrical generator, food supply and infrastructure all come crashing down. The protagonists, 13-year-olds Lina and Doon, who were just assigned their new jobs, refuse to accept this reality of life in darkness.

Eight-year-old me lived vicariously through that book. The wisdom stuck with me to this day, and ten years later I can repeat the plot verbatim. I learned how to identify and understand tyranny, oppression, censorship and the effects of the ruling class on society.

In an era where students around us are academically deteriorating and incapable of even writing an email because they are too comfortable using AI, the rise in popularity of these “self-help books” is nothing but a parallel to our intellectual laziness.

“Why would I write down notes for my presentation if I can just have Chat make the bullets?” was a phrase I heard. It’s because once you go up to present, you will not know what to say as you haven’t put the thinking in yourself. You simply have no thought. Your only option is to have an AI generated script written on a notecard, which I’ve seen much of. The logic goes the same way with “self-help books.”

AI has trained us to yearn for shortcuts, instant answers and pre-digested insights, with no friction required. That same impulse of “ChatGPT can do it” has now been applied to books. We no longer want to sit through a story and extract a personal takeaway—we want immediate answers. “Part 1: Fundamentals, Part 2: Make it Obvious, Part 3: Make it Attractive”… you get the idea.

The boy I taught to sail never had instructions telling him how to right a boat. He got cold water in his lungs, was exhausted, experienced a few failed attempts and had no choice but to do it himself. That’s what made it stick.

I can highlight to you every topic in “Atomic Habits,” but as long as you never attributed each topic to a story you learned or a habit that was created out of necessity like Lina and Doon, it will never stick.

You need friction to learn. It’s not just for understanding what resilience is or how to make good habits, it’s to know about love, altruism, sacrifice, the politics of campus, the ability to draw parallels from the past to our present at Bowdoin and beyond and to know how to challenge authority when the odds are stacked against you.

Mohamad Hijazi is a member of the Class of 2029.