Get 20% off any STSI course with code COLLEGE20 — become a systems thinker today!

In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera ask a fundamental question: what is college actually supposed to do?

As confidence in higher education declines, they argue that conversations about cost, careers, credentials, and politics may be missing the most important purpose of education: teaching people how to think. Information changes rapidly, careers evolve, and knowledge becomes outdated—but the ability to organize new information, build mental models, question assumptions, and adapt to reality remains valuable across a lifetime.

Derek and Laura explore the difference between an I curriculum focused primarily on information and an O curriculum focused on developing the ability to organize information into meaningful, actionable understanding. They also discuss workforce preparation, institutional bias, the rising cost of college, and why simply transferring information from professor to student is an outdated model of learning.

Ultimately, they argue that education should prepare young people for a future we cannot fully predict—not by giving them all the answers, but by giving them the tools to make sense of whatever comes next.

Get 20% off any STSI course with code CAL20 — become a systems thinker today!

In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera explore a simple idea with big implications: your calendar is a mental model.

What you schedule—and what you leave off—reveals something about how you organize your priorities, time, work, and life. Derek and Laura discuss how calendars, to-do lists, meetings, and deadlines can become useful tools, but can also create busyness, unnecessary pressure, and systems that quietly dictate our behavior.

They also explore the difference between progress and productivity, intrinsic versus external motivation, unrealistic daily expectations, and why constantly judging yourself by what you accomplished can become its own trap. Instead, they argue for examining whether the systems around you actually support the life and outcomes you want.

From calendars and classrooms to workplace systems and everyday routines, the episode shows how we embed mental models into the structures around us—and how those structures then shape our behavior. If your schedule feels like it is running your life, this episode offers a systems thinking lens for redesigning it.

Get 20% off any STSI course with code BRAIN20 — become a systems thinker today!

In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera deconstruct a familiar phrase: “That’s just the way it is.”

They explore the difference between accepting reality and surrendering to an outdated mental model. Sometimes “that’s the way it is” means acknowledging a real constraint. Other times, it means accepting a pattern, policy, culture, or way of working simply because it has existed for a long time.

The conversation examines how individual and collective mental models shape behavior, why successful old patterns can become difficult to challenge, and how organizations can uncover the thinking that sits underneath entrenched processes. They also explain why changing culture is ultimately about changing shared mental models—not simply trying to force different behavior.

If you hear “that’s just the way it is” in your team, organization, family, or even your own thinking, Derek and Laura argue that it should be a signal to stop, define what “it” actually is, and ask whether you are dealing with an unchangeable reality—or a mental model that can be rebuilt.