well, hello spring! nice to see you in all your brilliance. i am glad to see that you brought the stoke with you as well!

stoke—by the numbers

i said it in last month’s happiness report, and now it’s happening. we set a record in may for the most questions asked in a month. and we are on pace this month to beat 3,000 questions. i can’t wait for the heart of the summer and the days of fall! we’ll be handling more questions than ever before, helping more students than ever before, and dominating test prep like always!

here’s to growing the magoosh family!

student stoke

you might think i am joking about our students being stoked. you might even think i use the word “stoked” too much! all valid points, but let me direct your attention to exhibit a below.

see, i am not crazy! magoosh students are seriously pumped up!

stoke is accepting and embracing feedback

one thing that we embrace unflinchingly is feedback. we love it and need it! how else are we going to improve? our students are wonderful at providing feedback, pointing out typos, asking for more types of questions, and relaying their experience on the real test.

since we are constantly operating under this assumption, we can forget that not every company is the same way (i worked for one of those other companies). so it’s great to see this from a student—a reminder that we are doing things right.

strong product & smart algorithms = stoke & score improvement

i was recently reading an article by yvon chouinard—adventurer, surfer, kayaker, falconer, fly fisherman, and all around cool dude. oh, and he is the founder and owner of patagonia. anyway, he had this to say:

…the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge. the more you know, the less you need.”

our product and content team do an amazing job of taking a lot of complexity and hiding it away from the students, so they don’t have to worry about it. i even lobby at times for more complexity on the outside, and they restrain. i fall victim to the pervasive fallacy in our high tech 21st century—more features and more tech is a good thing.

because our teams are so good at hiding complexity or removing it, students can focus on gaining new knowledge. 🙂 and what it really comes down to is that they do a great job of stoking out our students!

test prep experts and purveyors of stoke

each month, the ‘thank yous’ flood in to our test prep experts and remote tutors. i could fill up this entire post with all the ‘thanks’ they get. or as mike calls them—euphorions! we are truly blessed at magoosh to have stellar test prep experts—mike, chris, and lucas—and a team of remote tutors who care deeply about our students and their success!

magoosh + stoke = test prep students trust

does anyone remember when entering your credit card number on a web page was the same as leaving your card on a street corner? i do! i remember thinking that it was crazy to buy something on the internet. what guarantee did you have that what you bought would show up at your house?

those fears still persist, though, and for good reasoning. that’s why building trust is fundamental. students are no different than other consumers on the web. they want to know they are buying something that is worth the cost. i am stoked to see that students think that magoosh is worth it.

stoke is tantamount to learning

or maybe it is learning is tantamount to stoke. i always mix it up. 😛

i love seeing people learn! the whole reason i fell in love with teaching was to see that moment over and over again. it’s so clear and delineated when a student has the lost look of frustration for days, and then that one moment, that one problem, that one insight when everything becomes illuminated. there is a physical change in the student. their face reflects the knowledge they just learned. they look up and you can see clearly in their eyes a rejoicing because now they “get it.”

we can’t see their faces now, but you can feel the sentiment in messages like these two.

prompt mind readers—that’s magoosh

i wonder if we are in the wrong business. should we be predicting people’s future? actually, if you think about it, we already do that in a way. we don’t really predict what the future holds, but we do show students a path towards a future they desire. if that doesn’t make you stoked, then nothing will. 😀

staying stoked

it’s easy to forget what this is all about. we spend our days fully immersed in the gre, gmat, sat, and now toefl. but it’s important to step back for a moment, and reflect. these tests are not the end for our students. students come to magoosh and move on to bigger and better things.

that’s what ben’s message helped me to do this month—reflect on the point of all our work.

we have the best job! we get to change lives in a positive way. we are empowering students to learn and take steps towards achieving their dreams.

be excellent to the universe, good people! keep the happiness high and the stoke level at eleven.