• As a professor, I use grades to help my students identify strengths and areas for improvement.
• Students panic when they get bad grades because they attach their self-worth to their performance.
• I'm working to change that by teaching my students that bad grades can be valuable.

When I was a college sophomore, I stopped looking at my assignments and exam grades to loosen the association between straight A's and my self-worth. At the end of each semester, I checked my course grades before enrolling in the next term, but that was about it. The strategy didn't fix all my overachieving and perfectionistic tendencies, but it did set a foundation for a healthier perspective on success and self-worth.

Now, as a professor, I encourage my doctoral students to develop a similarly detached relationship with their grades, and I'm often surprised by how much resistance this evokes.

Some students balk at the possibility that anything less than an A on any assignment could be inaccurate, urging me to consider their effort more than their performance. But that's not what grades are meant to mean.

Students have rightfully attached a lot of meaning to their grades

Granted, the landscape of higher education has changed dramatically since I was in college and graduate school, especially in terms of the competitiveness of college admissions.

Survey data in the US confirms that getting good grades is a significant stressor for most high school teens. I spent three years working as a staff psychologist for a large university counseling center, so I have seen this stress firsthand, and it can be devastating.

A number of other factors have been cited as contributing to younger generations' stress about grades. For example, parenting styles such as helicopter parenting can put even more pressure on students to perform well.

Social media and its association with increased depression and anxiety among youth also have an effect on self-worth. Finally, increased evidence of racial bias in educational testing has caused students to distrust the enterprise of testing, and rightfully so.

Professors and teachers struggle to see eye-to-eye on grading

I've noticed a widening gap between my and my students' assumptions about grades. To me, grades are a form of feedback in a learning environment. Therefore, students who are learning something new will not get high grades at the outset unless they have a particular strength in the area. No one who ever mastered their craft (or even came close) did so without receiving critical feedback. It's necessary for growth and completely separate from a person's intrinsic worth. In this way, a bad grade can actually be viewed as an opportunity.

Many of my students, on the other hand, consider grades to be an indicator of their career potential and worth. For them, every assignment is a high-stakes test of their fundamental value as a person and a professional. Within this framework, low grades are neither useful nor informative.

As an anonymous student of mine said on a course evaluation last year, "Giving students low grades does not facilitate learning."

Professors I know are changing their techniques to loosen students' grips on grades

Some academics have responded to these challenges by adopting effort-based grading practices. Others, like myself, have abandoned multiple choice exams and closed-book testing for written assignments and oral presentations.

Some of my colleagues now tell their students on the first day of class that everyone will get an A, rendering the resulting A's meaningless in the hopes of facilitating real learning.

I don't have a solution yet, but for now, I continue to use grades as a form of feedback. It is not easy sometimes to be the first teacher who has ever told a student that their writing isn't strong or assign what I think is a fair grade, knowing that it might cause a student to doubt their career potential.

At the end of the day, though, I respect them too much to collude with any system or mindset that confuses grades for goodness.

• A millennial paid off more than $100,000 in student loan debt in two years by juggling two jobs.
• Secretly working multiple remote jobs allowed him to double his income.
• He said being "overemployed" is stressful at times, but the financial benefits are worth it.

Adam paid off his student loan debt last month, after more than doubling his income by juggling multiple remote jobs.

Two years prior, he had roughly $118,000 in student debt and was earning about $85,000 annually from one job as a security risk professional. Adam, who is in his 40s and based in Arizona, was eager to become debt-free as soon as possible. He started looking for ways to boost his income and discovered "overemployment."

Since early 2023, Adam has secretly juggled two full-time remote roles simultaneously. While his overemployed lifestyle has been stressful at times, he said he typically doesn't work more than 55 hours a week across his gigs — and that the financial benefits have outweighed the downsides.

"I would like to be a millionaire before I turn 50," said Adam, whose identity was verified by Business Insider but asked to use a pseudonym due to fear of professional repercussions. "I want the financial freedom to give more time to family and friends."

Adam is among the Americans who have worked multiple remote roles on the sly to boost their incomes. Over the past two years, BI has interviewed more than two dozen job jugglers who've used their extra earnings to pay off debt and travel the world. To be sure, holding multiple jobs without company approval could have professional repercussions and lead to burnout. But many current and former overemployed workers have told BI the financial benefits outweigh the downsides.

Job juggling is worth the stress

In 2022, Adam began supplementing his income by driving for food delivery platforms like DoorDash. But after growing frustrated by his meager earnings, he decided to explore other options. That same year, he watched a YouTube video about people secretly working multiple jobs to boost their incomes.

When Adam began looking for a second remote gig in early 2023, he said his two main goals were to double his income and pay off his student loans within two years. In February 2023, he landed a second remote security risk professional role that pushed his combined earnings to more than $170,000 annually.

Adam said working multiple jobs has been challenging at times. He said it can be difficult to juggle overlapping meetings and deadlines, and that coordinating vacation time across both jobs can be laborious — as each employer has a different policy and approval process. While he's generally been able to manage his workload, he said it can be difficult when colleagues quit or are out of the office, and he's asked to pick up some extra work.

"Managing priorities and ensuring both roles receive adequate attention requires careful planning and adaptability," he said.

While these challenges have been stressful at times, Adam said he's generally been able to avoid burnout. He tries to stay organized and automate his work wherever possible. Outside work, he makes an effort to spend plenty of time with his friends and family. When he needs a break during the workday, he sometimes plays video games.

"I have learned to manage stress pretty well," he said.

Looking ahead, Adam said he has no plans to stop job juggling. His goal is to boost his combined income to at least $250,000 annually by swapping one of his jobs for a higher-paying one or starting a consulting business on the side.

"I do plan on staying overemployed for the foreseeable future," he said. "The way I am overemployed may change."

Are you working multiple remote jobs at the same time and willing to provide details about your pay and schedule? If so, reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

• VC firm Flybridge is using AI for writing investment memos, a critical part of any diligence.
• It's making the generator available for public use via its website and GitHub.
• Flybridge aims to help founders refine pitches and save investors time on routine tasks.

When Chip Hazard, a longtime startup investor at Flybridge, finds a startup he wants to fund, he writes a multi-page investment memo for his partners, outlining in detail all the risk factors and opportunities of a business. Now, he's using AI to help write these documents and saving hours of work.

It's the latest example of how venture firms are eating their own dog food. Investors aren't only funding startups exploring the application of large language models and "agents." They're also experimenting with these tools internally to improve how they source deals, research companies before investing, and track performance.

"If we could free up capacity on more routine tasks and therefore give us more time for judgment," said Hazard, "that's a good trade in our business."

This week, Flybridge is unveiling the AI-powered memo generator to the public — free for anyone to use.

How it works

Following the release of ChatGPT, Hazard made a cheeky bet with an associate at his firm: he promised a bottle of wine from his private collection if the associate could build an artificial intelligence that writes investment memos.

Flybridge's memo generator looks like a simple web form. The user uploads a pitch deck and a transcript of the pitch, fills in the round size and valuation, and adds links to the founder's LinkedIn page and the company website.

Under the hood, the memo generator was built on top of OpenAI's o1 model, according to Daniel Porras Reyes, a self-taught developer and Flybridge associate. This model is considered superior to its successors because o1 was designed to spend more time thinking before providing an answer, improving its output quality.

Flybridge used CrewAI, a portfolio company, to build "agents" — a new set of artificial intelligence tools that can work autonomously without much human supervision. Those agents can search the web through Exa, a search engine designed for use by agents, and create content about a company's competitive landscape or market size.

In as little as three minutes, the memo generator spits out a Word document with sections on the opportunity, risks, business model, go-to-market strategy, and team. It also proposes a list of follow-up questions for the founders.

Hazard said that by releasing the tool to the general public, Flybridge hopes that founders will run their pitch decks or investment memos through the generator before they meet with the firm. This could give founders an idea of how their pitch comes across so they can smooth out the kinks ahead of time.

Like most generative AI tools, the memo generator sometimes gets it wrong. It might leave a competitor off the list, said Porras Reyes, or reach a wrong number in the financial projections, Hazard added. Still, Hazard said the product shaves hours off of production; he spends less time writing a founder's bio, for instance, and more time thinking about whether they have the right characteristics and the best idea.

Hazard said if the memo generator was more capable, users might be tempted to "check their judgment at the door." He continued, "The point is to have it 'good enough' that you can then start to really apply your judgment."

Founders and investors can access Flybridge's open-source investment memo generator on its website or clone the project on GitHub.

• Nutrition expert Tim Spector said that most people get enough protein, but not fiber.
• He recommended people focus on increasing the amount of fiber they eat each day.
• His tips include switching meat for beans and eating different types of plant-based protein.

Protein-enriched foods such as cereal bars, energy drinks, and pasta have taken over grocery store shelves as consumers try to up their protein consumption. But a top nutrition scientist says that we're focusing on the wrong macronutrient.

More than half of Americans meet or exceed the minimum daily requirement of protein — 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day — according to the US Department of Agriculture's Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025.

Yet the Guidelines said more than 90% of women and 97% of men in the US don't meet the recommended intakes for dietary fiber.

Tim Spector, a British epidemiologist and cofounder of the nutrition company ZOE, told Business Insider that people should focus more on increasing their fiber intake than protein if they're aiming for a healthier diet. Fiber is great for gut health, can improve heart health, and can help ease constipation, BI previously reported.

Other health practitioners may not agree with Spector's call to prioritize fiber. Rosa Becerra-Soberon, a registered dietitian at Top Nutrition Coaching, told BI that the main goal should be focusing on a well-balanced diet with enough fiber and protein.

Spector shared three tips on how to hit your protein intake goals while getting enough fiber as part of a healthy diet.

Prioritize natural protein sources

Spector doesn't eat meat often but wrote in his cookbook, released in the US in 2025, that he still gets around 1 gram of protein per kilogram of his body weight per day, mostly from plants and whole foods

While plant-based protein sources tend to contain less protein than meat, they contain more fiber. According to the US Department of Agriculture, 100 grams of fried tofu contains about 18 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber.

Becerra-Soberon said that if you don't consume meat, you should make sure you get all the essential amino acids by eating grains and seeds.

Swap meat for beans and lentils

Spector wrote that replacing meat with legumes is a great way to increase your fiber intake while meeting your protein needs. Legumes like beans and lentils are protein-heavy, but higher in fiber and better for the environment than meat.

For example, canned chickpeas contain about 8 grams of protein per 100 grams, as well as 7 grams of dietary fiber. Chicken has 22 grams of protein per 100 grams, but no fiber, according to USDA data — and tends to be more expensive than chickpeas.

Longevity researcher Dan Buettner previously shared dietitian-approved recipes for cooking with legumes with BI.

Variety is key

Because plants generally contain less protein than meat, Spector wrote that he incorporates "a good mix" of plant-based protein sources into his diet throughout the day. This is because different whole foods contain different amounts of protein, so you might have to eat a "variety of nutrient-dense whole foods to take care of your protein needs," he wrote.

For example, Spector's go-to breakfast of yogurt, kefir, berries, nuts, and seeds contains about 30 grams of protein from multiple sources. He might also have butter beans with quinoa for lunch and a portion of tofu for dinner, he said.

His colleague at ZOE, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, previously shared his favorite bean chili recipe, which he eats for lunch every day. The recipe includes beans and farro, both of which are good sources of protein and fiber.

Becerra-Soberon also recommended little additions of protein throughout the day, such as sprinkling hemp seeds on meals, which contain 31 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber per 100 grams, or eating almond butter as a snack, which contains about 21 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber per 100 grams.

While eating healthily can be more expensive, BI has previously reported on how to eat healthily on a budget.

After studying burn victims and war veterans, entrepreneur Ran Ma hand-made a sock that contained sensors to detect foot ulcers. Now, her company, Siren, has secured $9.5 million, with an $8 million check from lead investor Mölnlycke Health Care to further the development and adoption of its diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) prevention product. It’s now […]

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It’s the second day of CES 2025, and I’m sure you’ve spent the whole day with your eyes pointed to our liveblog containing all the news of the day. But I’m sure there are a few folks who might have sneezed, or blinked, and missed something important. Which is why we’ve made this lovely list of all the biggest news from this day of the show, just for those folks who sneezed.

Lenovo blesses us with its presence at CES

There was plenty more PC-flavored news broadcast to the world, including Lenovo’s turn in the spotlight. Most notably, it showed off the ThinkBook Plus, a real version of its flexible OLED laptop from a few years back. At the touch of a button, that 14-inch display will expand to a bit more productivity-friendly 16.7-inches, which might justify the $3,500 starting price.

Lenovo also showed off a dummy prototype of its Legion Go 2 gaming handheld, and hints as to what specs it’ll be carrying. Alongside that, it announced the Legion Go S, the first third-party SteamOS gaming handheld that’ll offer a legitimate alternative to the Steam Deck. If you’d rather play games in a more traditional way, by which I mean with one leg as an ersatz table while you sit awkwardly on a crowded bus, then you can opt for Lenovo’s new Legion Pro 7i gaming laptop which can be specced with NVIDIA’s RTX 5090 graphics.

Of course, Lenovo also released some normal laptops, including the Yoga Slim 9i, the first laptop to launch with an under-display camera. The tweak enables it to boast a 98 percent screen to body ratio, which should get all of your friends and enemies feeling jealous. The ThinkPad X9, meanwhile, will likely break hearts of longstanding ThinkPad fans, since it has no aluminum chassis and no Trackpoint. Yes, we can hardly believe it too.

Qualcomm brings new chips, while Maingear, ASUS and Razer bring the PC goodies

Qualcomm, with less to prove than Intel right now, has announced its Snapdragon X chips will land in more Windows Copilot + PCs in the near future. A plethora of models are currently in development, with a focus on affordability rather than bells and whistles. Qualcomm and its partners, which include Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo are targeting a base price of $600. Which should be affordable enough for plenty of entry-level buyers to update their ageing hardware to take advantage of whatever we work out what AI is actually good for.

ASUS’ new ZenBook A14 made its debut in the desert, showing off some pretty lovely industrial design and a spec sheet to match. Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar was delighted with the premium materials used in its construction, and the look and feel. The one downside is that it’s equipped / blighted (delete as appropriate) with Qualcomm’s X or Elite chips, limiting backwards compatibility with older Windows apps.

Maingear, meanwhile, went to town on its fancy-looking water-cooled desktops as it attempts to reassert its dominance in the custom PC space. The range comes with heavy-duty plumbing and a whole bunch of fans and radiators to help keep your planet-burning GPUs cool.

One permanent fixture of CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada is gaming company Razer showing off its latest lighting-infused hardware. First up, it debuted its new Blade 16 laptop, which it says is its thinnest gaming laptop ever made. It also showed off Project Arielle, an RGB-clad gaming chair that’ll glow red as it warms you up and blue as it cools you down. And, to round things out, the company also showed off a fancypants monitor stand that, surprise surprise, was also RGB.

Smart Glasses at CES 2025

Smart glasses have always been something of a technological cul-de-sac, but the signs are that the technology is quickly maturing. We’ve seen plenty of specs at this year’s CES that aren’t just a faddy gimmick with a too-expensive price tag. For instance, RayNeo’s new X3 AR Pro frames comes with a built-in camera and the ability to interact with a ChatGPT-powered assistant. Then there’s Even Realities, which brought the G1A and G1B to the show, which impressed me no end. They’re far lower tech than some of the products on offer, but with a more robust feature set that includes real-time translation, teleprompting and turn-by-turn directions. Xreal, too, was able to show off its latest personal cinema-style AR glasses that didn’t make me want to throw up the second I put them on.

The CES Auto Show: New Honda EVs and BMW’s Panoramic iDrive turn heads

Honda rocked up in Nevada to talk up prototype models of the concept vehicles it showed off last year. The 0 Series Saloon sedan, which 100% looks like the car Inspector Gadget would drive, and the 0 Series SUV, which also looks like a car Inspector Gadget would drive. The auto maker said both models will be available to buy at some point next year, harnessing Honda’s brand-spanking new EV architecture.

And BMW was also here, showing off its new Panoramic iDrive system that’ll come to every new BMW. That includes a display running the width of the dashboard with key statistics on your drive, rather than sticking it in an instrument binnacle like a normal person is used to. Of course, the idea here is to give you so many places to stick useful information it’s impossible for you to miss what’s going on. Unless you spend so much time staring at the raft of digital displays that you forget your eyes should really be pointed toward the road.

The rest of the best at CES 2025

Day two of CES is where the focus pivots from the biggest names to everyone else, and there was plenty of interesting stuff on show. For instance, InkPoster uses color e-paper displays as a canvas upon which you can hang digital art on your walls. MCON by OhSnap is a neat magnetic game controller for your smartphone with high-class features like Hall Effect Joysticks. Anker built a solar umbrella that lets you re-juice your gadgets while catching some rays. And, not one to be outdone, EcoFlow showed off a solar hat that’ll do the same thing, but goofier.