What are you thankful for this holiday season? In my forum, we're discussing the little stuff we're thankful for. We all know we're thankful for the biggies - family, friends, health, jobs, houses, cars - but sometimes, we forget to be thankful for that little stuff. The stuff that keeps us going day in and day out.

So here's some of the things people have been thankful for in my forum:

1. Stickers (to help potty train toddlers)
2. PUR water filter
3. The ability to conceive (that's a biggie, but goodie, so we'll keep it)
4. Hand sanitizer
5. P-touch label machine
6. The morning light
7. Disposable diapers
8. Diaper Genie
9. Laptops
10. Coffee

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What about you? Show some holiday spirit and add your "little thing to be thankful for" to the list. I'll be thankful you did!

Photo © Flickr user Road Fun

This comes from The Princeton Review's Cracking the SAT 2009 Edition:

In the xy-plane, which of the following is a point of intersection between the graphs of y = x + 2 and y = x² + x - 2?

(A) (0,-2)

(B) (0, 2)

(C) (1, 0)

(D) (2, 4)

(E) (3, 5)

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Post your answer here in my forum!

For many people, reading is a barely managed chore.

It ranks right up there with cleaning a toilet, picking up after your dog, and listening to a server explain the specials of the day in a long, boring monologue despite the fact that you've told her repeatedly you aren't interested in the specials.

Things that make you want to stick a fork in your eye.

For some, reading has the same effect. It's mundane. A chore. Long passages of text are confusing, irritating, and filled with incomprehensible words. A person can certainly practice to become a skilled reader as an adolescent or adult, but the best way to help a person become an effective reader is to start young when he or she is a listener.

With children, you have to teach them to think critically about what they're hearing. When you're reading to them, coach them, too: Is this something they've heard before? What does this mean? Can they predict the ending? Can they use this information in a new way?

Many people do this naturally, because children are naturally curious. Kids ask  questions and comment about what they're hearing or seeing. "What's this, Mommy?" "That doggy says 'woof, woof'!" "Where did she go?" "That bear is blue like my bear!"

Struggling adult readers often fail to do the same thing with their own reading, They don't question, comment, or relate it to their own lives. They fail to truly think about what's in front of their eyes, and that's when reading becomes difficult.

In order to be a good reader, you have to be able to think critically about what you're reading. And with that, practice makes perfect.

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Give some reading comprehension questions a shot. Practice your own critical thinking!

Photo © flickr user Pratham books

Hold on to your drafty hospital gowns! The AAMC has just begun a review of the MCAT, one of only five that has been completed since the MCAT was first administered in 1928. Typically, big changes follow these kinds of reviews.

What is this 22-member committee looking for on the current MCAT? They are evaluating the content and "recommending changes that keep pace with advances in medical education and practice."

In other words, an overhaul is in store for the MCAT test as we currently know it.

So what does this mean for current pre-med students studying their stethoscopes off for this bad boy? Not a whole lot right now. As all committees have their fair share of time-commitment problems, this MCAT review committee is no different; it has no idea how long the review will take.  The members do promise, however, that a new test would be introduced no earlier than 2014.

So if you're a pre-med student trying to CYA for the MCAT coming up in January, then have no fear. You've got some time before you have to learn a completely new set of skills to pass this standardized test. For right now, your MCAT will remain the same as it's been for years and years:

Extremely, excessively difficult.