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# Hamzah Henshaw

Learn to Tell Your Story

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## Posts

- [Screenshots and more!](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/screenshots-and-more/) - Five Before Five: The Hidden Cost of Straight A’s Click here What’s Your Name? Click here
- [Upcoming Events](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/upcoming-events/) - Providence College Fair (May 1, 2023) Click here Boston College Fair (May 2, 2023) Click here
- [Heart-Centered College Businesses](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/heart-centered-college-businesses/) - Al-Noor Academy: New England’s first “cradle to college” PreK-12 Islamic school Click here NCAS Learning Center (Plainville): 34+ years experience in SAT Prep and more Click here Hamzah Henshaw Consulting: Learn to tell your story for college and beyond Click here Five Before Newsletter: Five ideas in your inbox every Friday blending the West and
- [Application Nuts & Bolts](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/application-nuts-bolts/) - Moody College List Builder Click here Khan Academy Free SAT Test Prep Click here
- [Internships & Extracurriculars](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/internships-extracurriculars/) - Master List of Boston Area Summer Programs and Internships Click here MIT Genetics Course Click here Jackson Lab Genetics Course Click here BU Rise Click here U Maryland: Terp Young Scholars Click here NYU: SPARC Program Click here WPI: Frontiers STEM program Click here Guide to Web Development (Ali Rehmatullah) Click here Islam Imagined: Dream
- [Scholarships & Financial Aid](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/scholarships-financial-aid/) - A Continuous Charity: Riba-free loans Click here Islamic Scholarship Fund Click here MeritMore: Merit money for College Click here Scholly: Scholarship Aggregator Click here UniGo: $3.6M Scholarships & Grants Click here National Grid DEI Scholarship Click here
- [PTC Foundations](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/ptc-foundations/) - Video of Empowering Young Muslims: Tips for College Success (Passcode: 3&XcMdNY) Click here Path to College Discussion: WhatsApp Group w/Q & A and more (VERY active) Click here Path to College Digest: WhatsApp Group moderated by college experts (MUCH quieter) Click here Community Jobs: WhatsApp group for job needs & requests Click here
- [Virtual Gratitude Journaling: A Technique that Finally Works](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/virtual-gratitude-journaling-a-technique-that-finally-works/) - I have been teaching 9th and 10th grade English at a small Islamic school for the past decade. For many years, I have been trying to design a way to incorporate journaling in the classroom. This year I have finally alighted on a routine that seems to work. Every Wednesday, my students and I complete
- [Education is in a Rut: Could AI Help Get Us Out?](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/education-is-in-a-rut-could-ai-help-get-us-out/) - I show the brilliant Prince Ea video below to my students every year. It never fails to rivet them because so much of what he shares resonates with their lived experience. Education clearly is ripe for disruption. I don't think AI is a panacea for all of our woes, but allowing students to access incredibly
- [30 Minutes a Day: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Stand Out in the College Admissions Game](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/30-minutes-a-day-the-surprisingly-simple-way-to-stand-out-in-the-college-admissions-game/) - As a college counselor, I get a lot of questions about the most effective strategies for gaining admission to competitive colleges. It is my firm belief that dedicating 30 minutes a day for a full year to the steps below can transform high school students into compelling college candidates with a fraction of the stress
- [Pivoting towards a Future with AI in the Classroom](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/chatgpt-menace-or-marvel/) - ChatGPT: Menace or Marvel? In bemoaning the current state of education, Sir Ken Robinson said, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” At the risk of being wrong, I have a contention: schools need to stop banning and start embracing artificial intelligence like ChatGPT. ChatGPT is the
- [Day 19: Rich Dad, Poor Dad Redux](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-19-rich-dad-poor-dad-redux/) - School does a pretty good job neglecting to teach students a lot of what they most need to know. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of personal finance. Despite claiming to “prepare students for the 21st century workforce,” most schools do very little to prepare students for how to manage their finances
- [Day 30: Where Do We Go From Here?](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-30-where-do-we-go-from-here/) - So now that I’ve finally arrived at the end of this 30-for-30 challenge, the question naturally arises: what’s next? I think the hidden, even from me, agenda of this whole series was to figure out my 1, 5, and 10-year vision. With the caveat that all of this is not only subject to change, but
- [Day 29: I Don’t Care Where You Go to College](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-29-i-dont-care-where-you-go-to-college/) - Tony Jarvis, the legendary head of Roxbury Latin, an all-boys school renowned as one of the best in the country, used to give the same speech every year to the parents of the senior class: “I don’t care where your sons go to college. I don’t care what they do for a living. Our mission
- [Day 28: How to Write a College Essay](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-28-how-to-write-a-college-essay/) - The idea of condensing all your life experiences into one pithy, 650-word personal statement fills nearly all of us with existential dread. #metoo. One of my most important roles as Director of College Placement at Al-Noor Academy, New England’s first full-time Islamic K12 school, is shepherding my charges through that terrifying rite of passage: the
- [Day 27: The Magic of Thinking Big](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-27-the-magic-of-thinking-big/) - Unwittingly and with no forethought, I have positioned myself to use all the knowledge and wisdom from my years in the trenches to advise the top of society from below. I used to tell people that I had solved the big picture but had forgotten to sweat the small stuff. Finding Islam at the age
- [Day 26: Teaching Good](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-26-teaching-good/) - My highest aspiration in the classroom is to teach good. I first came across this grammatically disillusioning concept when I read a close friend’s thesis at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and it has always stuck with me. Early in my career, when I was still learning the craft, I focused almost exclusively on
- [Day 25: Ready-Fire-Aim](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-25-ready-fire-aim/) - I’ve found that it’s usually better first to do, then to plan. This ready-fire-aim paradigm has served me well in life. Act first and figure out the why later. I don’t know, or more precisely only try to determine in retrospect, the origin of most of my most important decisions. My intention to make lifestyle
- [Day 24: Failure is Only a Dirty Word in School](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-24-failure-is-only-a-dirty-word-in-school/) - The only C I ever got on my report card was in sixth-grade woodshop. The effects of this “failure” (to take a page out of my daughter’s distorted lexicon) have been pervasive. To this day, trips to Home Depot are my Waterloo and DIY projects make me question my masculinity. I can usually manage to
- [Day 23: My Life Changed in a McDonald’s Bathroom](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-23-my-life-changed-in-a-mcdonalds-bathroom/) - While I find that practicing Islam in the West rarely causes open friction with societal norms, one area where this is less true is the practice of wudu. Wudu, or ritual ablution, is a prerequisite of salah, the five daily prayers that Muslims are enjoined to perform. Mosques and other Muslim institutions provide wudu areas,
- [Day 22: 218 Cedar Street](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-22-218-cedar-street/) - Living by the mantra that “he who has the most toys, wins,” often leads to a messy house. When my parents sold the home where I was born, we moved the entire evidence of my childhood into my basement. And there it sat for many moons. 218 Cedar Street was a fascinating place. A giant
- [Day 21: Cryptic Musings on Becoming a Man](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-21-cryptic-musings-on-becoming-a-man/) - Sometimes our best decisions start out as our worst. In June 2021, I went on a road trip with a dear friend from college (this was not the bad decision lol). The wave of Covid had finally begun to recede, and it was the first significant travel I had undertaken since the onset of the
- [Day 20: Golden B.O.O.O.T](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-20-golden-b-o-o-o-t/) - As World Cup fever drains my students of the last vestiges of their attention span, I am reminded of one of my proudest moments as a teacher. During my 3rd year at my old school, I won an award that, until now, I have never been able to speak about: the Golden B.O.O.O.T. A takeoff
- [Day 18: Let's Go Mr. Haloo](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-18-lets-go-mr-haloo/) - “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” My father would often share this Ralph Waldo Emerson quote with me when he felt I was becoming a bit too overwrought about adhering to a plan when variables changed. He was teaching me the value of flexibility and how I should always be willing to
- [Day 17: Recovering Islamic Banker](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-17-recovering-islamic-banker/) - One of the beauties of a liberal arts education is that it opens up a smorgasbord of possibilities, but this is also one of its curses. When I arrived at college, I decided that I wanted to major, or, in Harvard’s pretentious jargon, “concentrate” in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. As a relatively new convert
- [Day 16: A Preppy WASM Finds A Wife](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-16-a-preppy-wasm-finds-a-wife/) - My five minutes of fame came early and quietly. In 2003, an article came out about me in the Boston Globe with the cringey headline, “A Preppy Wasp Finds Allah.” The article was written by our next-door neighbor and close friend of my sister, Beth Carney. The inspiration for the story came when Beth saw
- [Day 15: The Magic of Fifteen](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-15-the-magic-of-fifteen/) - Every year a mischievous student who wants to really antagonize me will ask, “Why is a guy with a Harvard degree wasting his time at a school like this?” I know the whole “sticks and stones” routine, but these words cut a little too close to the bone. They ask a question I sometimes ponder
- [Day 14: The Little Journal that Could](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-14-the-little-journal-that-could/) - At the start of every year, I tell my students I’m about to give you a gift you can use to change the world. As they sit in nervous expectation, I reach into a paper bag and start handing out colorful composition notebooks. These little 80-page journals—50 cents each at Staples at the beginning of
- [Day 13: Orphan Son of an English Teacher](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-13-orphan-son-of-an-english-teacher/) - I often tell people that I was orphaned by my mother's grading. My mom taught English for more than 33 years at the Winsor School, an all-girls’ school in Boston that is widely considered to be one of the best private schools in the country. I have no doubt that my mom was a huge
- [Day 12: The Unbearable Lightness of Unsubscribing](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-12-the-unbearable-lightness-of-unsubscribing/) - When I discovered the “unsubscribe” button, everything changed. My inbox would give many people a case of the collywobbles. For years, I have let my various inboxes bloat with a rapidity that would make even my allergic-to-mowing neighbors blush. Just as weeds left unchecked will quickly overwhelm a neglected garden, so too has my poor
- [Day 11: Sleep is Gold](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-11-sleep-is-gold/) - Despite marrying into a Desi family, I don’t know much Urdu. But I have gotten a lot of mileage out of the few phrases I do know. “Sona sona hay,” is one of my favorites. It riffs off of the fact that the word for sleep is the same as the word for gold, so
- [Day 10: Finding my Forehand](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-10-finding-my-forehand/) - My healthiest obsession is tennis. Love of racket sports runs deep in my family. My father was a champion player of Rackets, a now defunct game that was a cross between squash and racquetball. It was he who first introduced me to tennis probably around the age of seven. He issued a challenge to his
- [Day 9: Grades](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-9-grades/) - Academics have always been my drug of choice. When I was in first grade, I received the Scholarship Award at the end of the year. Ever since I’ve been chasing that dopamine hit of the A (or increasingly ubiquitous A+). And I think that’s a damn shame. Grades do have some positives. Just like capitalism,
- [Day 8: Dad](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-8-dad/) - The other day I got one of the strangest emails I have ever received. “I know this is very heavy,” my oldest brother wrote, “but we need to finish editing dad’s gravestone.” What made this so strange is that my father is still living. Sadly, however, he now spends his days at Vicarage-by-the-Sea, a wonderful
- [Day 7: Mind the Gap](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-7-mind-the-gap/) - When Harvard z-listed me, accepting me for the class of 2001 instead of 2000, I was ecstatic because it meant I was “forced” to do something I had already been planning to do: take a gap year. Gap years are big in England and across Europe. They are a bit less common here in the
- [Day 6: Applying to College](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-6-applying-to-college/) - Winter break of 1996 was just about the most stressful time in my high school career. I had applied early to Harvard and gotten deferred. With my own students I now liken the early application deadline of November 1 as the headwall of the admissions season hurricane. It is followed by a mid-cycle lull, the
- [Day 5: Weight Loss Journey](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-5-weight-loss-journey/) - I really like the NFL. As a New England resident during the Patriot’s dynasty, this came naturally. But I also really like insightful analysis and good writing. For many years, my favorite football writer was Bill Barnwell, first with Grantland then The Ringer and now ESPN. He is the Nate Silver of football writers who
- [Day 4: What's Your Name?](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-4-whats-your-name/) - There are a lot of seemingly simple questions that I have a hard time answering. One of the most basic is, “What’s your name?” Even before my conversion to Islam, this question was unusually fraught. I was born John Marshall McCormack Henshaw. Despite its primacy in order, John is one of my least-used names, showing
- [Day 3: Tectonic Plates](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-3-tectonic-plates/) - Although I am no marine biologist, from what I understand, the area where two tectonic plates meet is rich with flora and fauna. Of course, this area is also the epicenter of earthquakes. I have often longed for a metaphor that would encapsulate my identity as a WASM (White Anglo Saxon Muslim). I used to
- [Day 2: 20,000 Steps or The Joy of Measuring](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-2-20000-steps-or-the-joy-of-measuring/) - I really like measuring things. Estimating is cool and all, but knowing something exactly brings me inordinate pleasure. That is one reason I was immediately hooked when I jumped on the Fitbit bandwagon back in February 2019. The first day I wore my Fitbit, we had a field trip at United Skates of America. During
- [Day 1: NYTimes Crossword in Ink](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/day-1-nytimes-crossword-in-ink/) - When I re-discovered the eraser, everything changed. You see, I’ve always hated the NYTimes crossword puzzle. This might seem surprising given that I’m quite the word maven and love linguistic puzzles. The Assistant Head of my old school used to have a standing date with his wife every Sunday morning when they’d do the crossword

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- [Home](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/) - Learn to Tell Your Story, Hamzah Born and raised in Boston, Hamzah Henshaw accepted Islam in 1994 while attending St. Mark’s, a suburban boarding school in Southborough, MA that his father and grandfather attended before him. He is a 2001 graduate of Harvard College, where he concentrated on Near Eastern Languages
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- [Blog](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/blog/) - Hamzah's Blog Virtual Gratitude Journaling: A Technique that Finally Works I have been teaching 9th and 10th grade English at a small Islamic school for the past decade. For many… Read More 30 Minutes a Day: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Stand Out in the College Admissions Game As a college counselor, I get a
- [About](https://hamzahhenshaw.com/about/) - About me About Hamzah Born and raised in Boston, Hamzah Henshaw accepted Islam in 1994 while attending St. Mark’s, a suburban boarding school in Southborough, MA that his father and grandfather attended before him. He is a 2001 graduate of Harvard College, where he concentrated in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations with a minor in
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