So, I'm grateful to have this opportunity to present on behalf of the many members of our TCGA kidney analysis working group. Genetic changes underlying clear cell renal cell carcinoma, or CCRCC, include alterations in genes controlling cellular oxygen sensing, such as VHL gene, and the maintenance of chromatin states, such as PPRM1 gene. For 446 CCRCC cases, TCGA evaluated clinical and pathological features, genomic alterations, DNA methylation profiles, and RNA and proteomic signatures. Shown here is a data summary for our project. In all, 446 tumors were profiled on most of the platforms shown here, while 372 tumors were profiled for all of the RNA and DNA data types. And so some of the integrative analyses focused on this core set of 372, but then other analyses made use of all data available. We surveyed these tumors by whole exome sequencing and found 39 significantly mutated genes, the most frequently mutated subset of which is shown here. And the somatic mutations were initially called by three sequencing centers, Baylor, College of Medicine, Broad, and UCSC. So each center analyzed the BAM files using their respective mutation calling algorithms. And shown here are the numbers of variant calls for each center for the top 50 or so most significant genes in our data. And so we can see the intersection between any two centers as well as calls that were made by one center, but not by the other two centers. And so for our analyses, for the integrative and pathway analyses, we focused on the calls that were made by two or more centers as being of a higher confidence. But then recently we carried out validation of these mutation data using an orthogonal platform, using the ion torrent platform in this case. And so here are shown the corresponding validation rates for our top genes. And as we might expect, we see that those calls that were made by any, at least two centers, had very high validation rates on the order of the high 80s to 90 percent validation. Whereas those calls that were made by only one center, we find that the validation rate is much lower. So our significantly mutated genes as a group were validated by an orthogonal method, and that's a nice result to have that strengthens our confidence in our results, and there's more on the sequence analysis and the validation in this poster, 114. Now back to our significantly mutated genes. It is well known that in CCRCC, it's closely associated with VHL gene mutations and alterations that lead to stabilization of hip 1 alpha and hip 2 alpha. And as expected, most all of our cancers were impacted for VHL gene with well over half showing both alleles inactivated by some combination of copy loss, somatic mutation, or DNA promoter methylation. Several genes involved with chromatin regulation were frequently mutated, including PBRM1, set D2, BAP1, and R1a. And this would implicate a major role for epigenetic reprogramming in this disease. And these chromatin modifier genes have also recently shown up in the other cancers under study by TCJ, and so this appears to be a very important process in many cancer subtypes. We also found a number of mutations in PI3 kinase pathway regulators as well as alterations at the copy level, so the PI3 kinase pathway appears to be heavily targeted. Now in CCRCC, the copy number landscape consisted primarily of chromosomal arm level gains or losses. So for example, 3P is a well-known broad region of loss that would encompass many genes, but a few key genes are also in this region, including VHL and some of the aforementioned chromatin modifier genes. Now there were fewer focal regions of copy alterations in this disease as compared to what we have observed in other cancers. And so here a focal region would represent a smaller region of gain or loss as observed in a subset of the samples, and a focal region would be indicative of genomic targeting of a single gene or a handful of genes that gives us a smaller region in which to focus. And for the focal deletions, which are shown on the left here in terms of their overall significance, we find a handful of genes that would appear to be a period of tumor suppressors for some of these cancers, such as VHL, F-Head, C2K2AMP10, and on the right we have our focal amplifications, which include some oncogenes such as MDM4, MIC, and then we have this region 5Q35.3, which has two genes which have been found to be able to drive the PI3 kinase pathway, GMB2L1 and SQSTM1. Now based on RNA-seq analysis, our group identified a number of recurrent fusion RNA transcripts as shown here, and using targeted methods, 11 of these 13 recurrent events could be validated. We found that mutations in specific genes, particularly those involved with chromatin regulation, could be associated with widespread molecular alterations. So for example, here we see widespread DNA hypomethalation being associated with mutation of the H3K36 methyl transferase, set D2. So this finding would be consistent with the emerging view that H3K36 trimethylation may be involved in the maintenance of a heterochromatic state, whereby DNA methyl transferase 3A normally binds trimethylated H3K36 and then methylates nearby DNA. And so if we take out set D2 function, then apparently we lose this mechanism of methylation in the cells. We also found that the total extent of DNA hypomethalation in cells increases with advancing tumor stage and grade. And this would suggest that the epigenetic state of a more aggressive kidney cancer, as denoted by a higher stage or grade, differs from that of a less aggressive kidney cancer. And from paradigm and hotnet pathway analysis, we found that mutations involving the SWE SNF chromatin remodeling complex show potential far-reaching effects on other pathways. So SWE SNF complex includes P-Barm1, R1A, and SMAR-K4. So shown here, the circles represent genes, and so for each gene we have various levels of data being represented, including mutation, expression, and inferred pathway activity by paradigm analysis. These data are shown across all the tumors examined, and then the data are rolled up into a circle for compact data presentation. And then a line between any two genes would denote some type of inferred functional relationship. So based on databases approaching and approaching interaction and post-transcription regulation, we find that chromatin modification pathway intersects a wide variety of processes involving genes such as SAC1, NFCAPA-B1, hip-1-alpha, June, FOS, beta-continue, and TGF-beta receptors. Now a number of analyses carried out by our group are set out to define molecular signatures and pathways of aggressive CCRCC. Now previously, as part of the TCJ paper in a varying cancer, we defined a gene expression as signature of survival using a training data set and then apply the signature to multiple test data sets in predicting higher risk versus lower risk patients. So this is based on mRNA data. And in multiple validation data sets, both internal and external to TCJ, we found that the signature could distinguish higher risk from lower risk patients. So having these patterns be reproducible across multiple data sets is nice to see. And so for the Clear Cell Project, we wanted to apply this approach, but also to extend it beyond just mRNA data, but also here considering three other data types, micRNA, DNA methylation and protein, in addition to mRNA. And so we divided our sample profiles into discovery and validation subsets. And using the discovery set, we defined the top survival correlates for each data type examined and then applied the respective prognostic signatures to the validation subset to demonstrate reproducibility of patterns. And for each data type examined, their respective prognostic signatures could clearly distinguish higher risk from lower risk patients with very profound differences in terms of overall survival. Now this would indicate that the molecular alterations involved with more aggressive kidney cancer involve multiple levels of data, not just mRNA data, which has been the most studied until recently, but also we see micRNA features, protein features, and DNA methylation features that can also be associated with more aggressive versus less aggressive cancers. Now some may look at a result like this and think of the possibility of driving a molecular based assay for use in the clinical setting for providing prognosis information for patients. And that may be a possibility, but I think there's another application for these results in that we can ask the biological question of what are the pathways or processes involved with making some kidney cancers more aggressive than others? Are there clues that can be found in these catalog of survival correlates that we have gleaned from the TCGA data? For example, when we drill down into our protein data, we found that survival correlates include AMP-activated kinase, or AMPK, and acetylquacoboxylase. These are proteins that are anti-correlated with each other, where low levels of AMPK and high levels of acetylquacoboxylase are associated with a worse outcome. These proteins are particularly interest due to their key roles in metabolism, specifically we know that down-regulation of AMPK together with up-regulation of acetylquacoboxylase together contribute to this metabolic shift of the cell from relying on oxidative phosphorylation to relying upon aerobic glycolysis. This is also known as a type of Warburg effect, and it can provide a growth advantage to the cancer cell. So given that initial finding, we went back and looked at our TCGA data in the context of these core medical pathways that have been well studied over the past 50 years or more and include glycolysis as well as oxidative phosphorylation that occurs in the mitochondria. And so I actually had flashbacks in my undergraduate biochemistry as I was putting this figure together. So these are very well-established pathways. But on top of this, we've overlaid our TCGA survival correlates data, where the boxes represent mRNA features and the diamonds represent protein features. And the color for a given feature denotes a correlation with patient survival, with red denoting a correlation with a worse outcome, and blue denoting a correlation with a better outcome. Now when we put everything together, we find that these survival correlates do indeed underlie a glycolytic shift. Specifically, we find that there is up-regulation of genes involved in the pentose phosphate pathways being associated with a worse outcome, as well as down-regulation of AMBK at the mRNA and protein levels, and up-regulation of genes involved with fatty acid synthesis being associated with a worse outcome. And then in the mitochondria, we see a systematic down-regulation of genes involved with oxidative phosphorylation and the Krebs cycle being associated with a worse outcome. So here we have an example of taking a catalog of molecular features gleaned from genomics analysis and putting these in a context of known pathways, and thereby we hope to achieve a more pathway-level view or a higher-level view of what is happening in the cancer cell. And so these changes in gene expression that are observed here being associated with metabolism are intriguing, but then we can ask the question of just what might be driving these events, what might be driving these changes in metabolism and the more aggressive kidney cancers. Likely there are many factors involved here, but one pathway that appears to be involved is the PI3 kinase pathway. A PI3 kinase pathway has multiple roles, one of which is to help regulate glycolysis and metabolism. And so if the PI3 kinase pathway is altered, then that likely results in changes in metabolism in the cell. And we do find that this pathway is highly targeted at the genetic and genomic levels. So here is an analysis from the MIMO group showing that different genes may be altered in different samples, but that if we take the sum total of these alterations, we find that there is a large percentage of these kidney cancers that have at least one alteration in the key gene in the pathway. Now these key genes include GMB2L1 and SQSTM1, which are located on the 5Q35.3 region. These genes have been perhaps understudied in the context of the PI3 kinase pathway, but could perhaps receive more study in light of these findings. But in addition to the genetic and genomic levels, we find that the PI3 kinase pathway also appears to be a target at the epigenetic level. Specifically, we find that promoter methylation of Mir21 and Greb10 contributes to PI3 kinase pathway deregulation. So shown here is a schematic of the PI3 kinase pathway where boxes represent RNA features, diamonds represent protein features, and in this case ovals represent DNA promoter methylation features. Red denotes a correlation with a worse outcome, blue with better outcome. Now on the one hand, in the more aggressive kidney cancers, we find that there is a significant decrease in promoter methylation of the mycariname Mir21, and this decrease in methylation corresponds with an increase in expression of the gene. Now Mir21 has a well-known and established target, which is P10, and we also find in our data as Mir21 increases, P10 expression decreases at both the mRNA and the protein levels. So these three events are happening together, and they tend to happen in the more aggressive kidney cancers. On the other hand, we find that the more aggressive kidney cancers show an increase in promoter methylation of the Greb10 gene, and that corresponds to a decrease in expression. And normally, Greb10 serves to inhibit the PI3 kinase pathway. It provides negative feedback for the pathway. And so if Greb10 expression is decreased, we can infer that that could only serve to further increase PI3 kinase activity. So here we have evidence for multiple mechanisms targeting the PI3 kinase pathway, and that these changes we see with respect to PI3 kinase correspond with the changes that we see in metabolism, and also are associated with a worse patient outcome. And so this is really a story that comes about from having all these different data types on the same set of cancers. We have microRNAs contributing to this story, as well as DNA methylation and mRNA and protein and genetic and genomic data. All are helping to fill in this picture of what pathways are at work here. So in conclusion, we find that integrative analyses highlights the importance of both VHL HIF pathway and chromatin remodeling histone methylation pathway in CCRCC. We also find frequent targeting of the PI3 kinase pathway at the genetic, genomic and epigenetic levels. And finally, we see evidence for a metabolic shift to aerobic glycolysis that appears involved with more aggressive disease. And this brings us to the end, and I thank you for your time. A few minutes for questions. Maybe I'll start off asking Chad to comment. This disease has become something of a poster child for tumor heterogeneity studies, and maybe you can comment on the extent to which we cannot inform anything at all about the tumor heterogeneity story given the nature of the data collection and the sample collection. Sure, yeah. I think any cancer is going to have an amount of noise. I think this type of TCGA data is going to have not just technical noise, but I think there is biological noise. And one of these is going to be the tumor heterogeneity. I think some diseases may be more heterogeneous than others. I think that's yet to be more fully fleshed out in the clear cell cancers. But I think what we're seeing here is maybe more of a, I think we characterize more of the dominant clones. And I think our analyses would favor looking across inter-sample heterogeneity, what's different across samples. I think drilling down, and within a given sample, I think that's another type of study, and it's certainly well worth while. I think we need to look at both avenues. Thanks. There's a question over here. So if essentially all these different prognostic factors obtain on different types of data actually captures alteration of the same pathways, then could you also exploit like clinical data and multivariate analysis to actually see if they are dependant or independent and understand if they actually cover the same alteration? So the different prognostic signatures, maybe put them in a multivariate analysis, see which one is. We've tried that, and I think it depends on the question. If one wants to provide more, one wants to ask which is providing more information, it might be a little bit of a wash. I think in the multivariate model, maybe the DNA methylation signature was not as significant as the others, but it's a little hard to interpret. I guess it's this question of if you want to divide another molecular assay for use in the clinical setting, and I think that's something that could be looked into a bit more. I think what we showed here is more asking the biological question, what are the pathways? And I think a multivariate analysis is trying to get at this, well, can we come up with a better clinical biomarker? And maybe we can. I think they maybe do provide a little more information than the clinical biomarkers, but there could be some tweaking here in terms of getting that more refined signature. Hi, Chad. Let's talk. I just wonder, using the training site and the relations that you show, different molecular features can predict survival data. I just wonder, given that clinical data, like tumor state, other clinical data, why do those molecular data provide additional prediction power? Oh, so if the molecular signatures provide more information than the clinical data? Yeah. Well, so if you try to make a multivariate model for each signature, I think we did it separately for each signature, and I think three out of the four signatures could provide a little more information. They still provide significant information if you factor in grade and stage and age and the other variables. Thanks. Hi. This James just tried to make a comment that we talked about this, and it's really tried to address the first question brought up by the attendees. So the idea is basically for the kidney cancer, we look at 400-plus cases, about 100 of them actually went down to receive systemic treatment. So we assemble a so-called clinical TCGA, basically have many physicians involved, and we are actually actively collecting clinical data that related to the treatment response. And I think that's the first step, at least, that we can take to understand the genomic basis underlying the treatment response. And that will actually help a lot in terms of how to prioritize and how to treat patients. And I think that would be the best use of the TCGA data. No, I agree. I think that's a worthwhile avenue of research. And I think that would speak to a lot of these TCGA projects where maybe the clinical data are still being collected. So as we collect more data, I think we can get even more out of these data than what we've got from the initial analysis by going back and maybe fleshing out the clinical data and asking more questions. Thank you. Let's take one more. Yes, for the MIR-21 and GRM-10, can you quantify GRB-10? Can you quantify the frequency of that in the PIC-3CA, the methylation, roughly? And secondly, what orthogonal platform did you... Were you able to confirm that in, say, methylation-specific PCR or something like that? What platform to confirm the methylation patterns? I don't know that... Well, I don't think we've... No, I don't think we don't have... We don't tend to validate the methylation data. I think we try to see if it syncs up with the other data types, but that's something that I think could be looked at maybe in independent cohorts or in the TCGA data. I think in terms of a percent, it's more of a continuous value. So I think I'd have to maybe ask Pierre Laird's lab what actual percentage, but I think just looking at a heat map and maybe a sizable percentage, maybe... I think when we bin the samples in terms of good, bad, intermediate prognosis, we did that on thirds, but that's a little bit arbitrary. I think you can look at maybe, on the order of 25%, could have lower or decreased methylation levels. Thanks. Thanks again.


Uh, so I'm pop-pop and Evie calls me pop-pop all the time. But what's awesome is that if Andrani's with me, which is most of the time, Andrani is Nana, and that is Evie's choice. She just started calling her Nana. She called her Nana. Nana. You'll know what that means, right? That's Spanish, grandma. Is it really? I didn't know that. I have a Nana. Really? Yeah. She calls her, my ex-wife is Lala. That's preferred for her. Lala. Yeah. And which is also Spanish for Aunt. Is it? Okay. Well, she's Lala is, is my ex-wife. Nana is Andrani and whenever we're together, almost every single time. I mean, she always calls me pop-pop and it's wonderful. Like Ashley just said, like I had left there and she said, Evie was asking for you, but if we're at the door, she sees me and she sees Andrani. She goes straight to Andrani. Nana. That's really sweet. And that was her choice. She just started calling her Nana of her own accord. My stepfather is Hispanic and his whole family is Mexican, right?  Sex lead. Granny, but then her parents who are now deceased, um, their Nana and pop-pop, which is grandma and grandpa. Uh, I had no idea. And, and then I have a Tia Lala. Wow. Tia Lala, which is crazy. Yeah. Nice. That's good. Isn't Loco crazy? There's different ways. Loco in the cabeza. Like if you call Tia Lala, this is crazy. Crazy. Yeah. Ah, all right. Anyways, you don't say like Gingotumadre. No, I say, uh, pinchejotos. Yeah, that's good, too. Hey, welcome back to our Steve with direction. It's Corbin. Me llamo is Ricardo. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter for 15 seconds. Yeah. Como se dice juicy content en español? Puto.  I don't know either one. I know all the Spanish curse words. Do you? Yes. Um, but that's, that's all I ever cared to learn. And I worked in a lot of restaurants. And so the people that the cooks and the people in the back, they would call me that the first full sentence I could say with fluidity to, to a Pepe and Miguelito was because I wanted to talk to them in Spanish when I worked. So I would say, necesito mas agua en la mesa, venta uno, por favor. Es tu paro, no es tu pantalones, puto. Oh, si. That means that me pantalones.  Muy magnífico. Me pero es muy magnífico. You could also say, um, mit corazón en fuego por ti. Your heart is what? My heart is on fire for you. That's what you say to the lunch ladies. When you want him to give you something free. Hey, mit corazón en fuego por ti. And they're like, ah, look at that. Anyways, I have fun. Yeah. Today we got a new series announcement for Amazon. Hey, with, uh, with Siddharth Malhotra. You'd recognize that name? Absolutely do. From the military film. Was it last year or the year before that one came out? I think it was last year, right? I don't know. It's been a long year. Yeah. Um, but this is called Indian police force and it's directed by Rohit Shetty, who's known for big action films. Uh, this should be pretty cool. Um, so this is just an announcement. It's not a full on trailer. It's just a, it's just an announcement video. Um, is it a 2022 series or 2023? Do we know? I don't know. I would hope it's early enough in the year that they're dropping this thing this year. We should be getting a lot of series. Have we just haven't gotten them yet? I'm so happy Barry's dropping season three. One of you so excited. Oh, and stranger things is finally dropping that season. Well, that's good. They just lost subscribers. I know they need it. Netflix needs stranger things more than ever. It's so funny because I was talking to my group of friends who I have a cinema club with and I'm like, they're not doing anything in American stuff. No. But Indian stuff, they're killing it. Yeah. I mean them and Amazon and other. Yeah. The problem with India is just like the problem here. They're too fricking expensive. Yeah. So, uh, and you hear about the billionaire investor in Twitter? Yeah. You know, I'm not great. No, no, no, no, no, not him. The billionaire investor in Netflix who was like, okay, I can't take the losses anymore. So he pulled out of it yesterday as it was dropping to the tune of the loss was $400 million. That'll hurt. Yeah. Ouch. Uh, here we go. All right, let's just get into this. Wow. Look at those lenses. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Make sure those are blanks. There's the walk. You see the colors in the light? Interesting. So are they doing a Masala series? Because he, if you didn't know, is the guy that has that copy universe that has, I believe, a J. Devgen, Ranveer, and, uh, and, uh, Akshay, the one that just came out. Yeah. That we watched and they're walking in slow-mo just like that as they come around the corner. And I think those are, those are massive Masala kind of films. Um, well, it's promising to be the biggest action series. Um, yeah, he's definitely that. So, uh, maybe it may obviously OTTs are relatively new to India, but obviously series aren't. So how, I'm assuming they haven't done anything like this. An action series is going to be really, really great. Um, and so I don't think we've seen it, but this was that big one we reacted to the teaser when we went to India, uh, but this is the Ranveer one. Right. Uh, Simba, Ranveer, he was the director of, uh, Ranveer Ching returns that, that ad. Yep. I do remember that. It was amazing. Uh, um, but yeah. So he's known for, well, this will be the first that I know of like Masala banging action series. Obviously we've had some, and family man would probably be the closest with what they do with their action and, but they're, it's not a primarily action series. Correct. They've got some actions, like moments, but especially their long shots, the long ones. Um, but the, the show's probably primarily a drama. I would love just a full blown, really well done. Good stunt work, good CGI. You know, you're going to have the actor for it. Yeah. Uh, because he's a good actor. Everything we've seen him in, um, and the, the film I was talking about before was what? The one with Ranveer, Akshay and Vijay? No, no, no, no, with the lead of this. Oh, excuse me. It was, uh, this guy. Oh yeah. The, the army film that we love so much. Sheer Shah.  Right. Or if it's going to be more kind of like family man, Mizzapur have drama, but then just some. And is it going to be, I imagine it's going to be amped up for TV entertainment, but is it going to be like some shows here? There's a show that, there's been a show called SWAT, uh, and the CSI shows and all the other crime shows that are actually often based on real cases. They're, they're not reenactments of the cases, but the script and the storyline is actually based on real events that took place. I don't know if that's what they're going to do. Yeah. I'm, I'm so curious about this. And they didn't, they didn't say a date, right? I didn't see it. Uh, let's see it. Maybe I just didn't go. No, I don't ever see it a date. Read this. Prime Video joins forces with Rohit Shetty pictures for its most ambitious action pack series titled Indian police force. The eight part high octane action series marks digital debut of one of India's most exciting and accomplished filmmakers, Rohit Shetty, known for his big ticket mass entertainers. The series will present Siddharth Mahathra in a never before seen avatar of a cop hero. Currently under production, the Amazon original series aims to become the beacon of high quality Indian entertainment globally with a simultaneous launch in more than 250 countries and territories. Interesting. So, yeah, I haven't seen any obvious. I don't think we've seen any of this director's films. Really? I don't think so. Really? Yeah. Because obviously we didn't, we didn't end up seeing the donor thread veer. Okay. And obviously we've heard about Simba forever. Simba.  Hey, Giovanni. Hey, Giovanni. Oh, he just gets nice. No, no, he just gets a thanks. Chennai Express, which is a, I think, a Deepika and Shahrukh Khan film. I think it's a big masala film as well. Singham, which I believe is the Ajay Devgun starter one of the cop universe. Right. Is so. Let me see. I don't think we've seen anything. Yeah, I think you're correct. There's nothing. Nothing we've seen of his. But. But Noah's name. Oh, yeah. And we've, I think we've seen him as a producer on some things as well. He's known as the big action guy. And so I don't know. I can't tell you if this is a correct equivalent, but obviously Michael Bay is the big massive explosion guy. Not really known for great cinema, but sometimes fun cinema, if it's not just his normal shtick. Right. Right. Because he's almost become a meme now. Sadly, with his stuff. But he's become a cliche. He has made some good films. He has. Obviously the first Transformers, I think was a good one. I agree. And then didn't he direct one of the pirate films? Or was that? I don't think so. No, but I've brought up 13 Hours is my by far. My favorite Michael Bay film. Yeah. And so there are times when. You know, they can kind of collide the action and a good film. That's a terrible picture of what I would do. Oh, sincerely, like one of the like one of the most legendary action, but also is a good film is Die Hard. Did he direct that? No, no, no, no. I'm just talking about the genre. Gotcha. The genre. That's just like picture perfect action and story combination with great actors and really well staged action sequences. Or our buddy. Yeah, that's that's that's that's top notch right there. That's that's. Obviously, the Marvel universe is the pinnacle of all action with great story and great acting. I was just thinking about RDJ and how what an incredible job he did in endgame. He could have merited a supporting actor, not he did so well in that. He directed Bad Boys, which is a fun film. That's a good film in terms of just entertainment. Like it's I didn't realize that it was him. So like it'd be super interesting.  It does he make just entertaining films or does he make an intern for Raiders of the Lost Ark? Oh, was he apparently so. Which means he came under the came under the cape of either Lucas or Spielberg and to or Frank Marshall means he worked with. Amarash Puri. Well, if he did the third film, because that was the first Raiders was the very first one. I always forget them. Yeah, because whenever I watch one, I watched them all. It's interesting. They added the Indiana Jones later when it first came out. It was just called Raiders of the Lost Ark. And then they started calling them Indiana Jones and the yeah. And they've gone back and changed the title now. And now they call it Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yeah, for more of a brandy. But anyways, it looks look good. Fun. I mean, well, nice announcement. We'll see how the trailers are and we'll see how the series looks when it comes out. But that's exciting because we should be getting a lot of series this year. Some sequels to the stuff we've watched and some new stuff. I can't think of anything right now that I would I'm watching or know of or would care to watch that is this genre in TV, anywhere in the world right now. Yeah. So that would be different. It's a great lane for them to be driving later this year. We're going to get to like medieval fantasy film. We sure are. We sure are. I'm ready for that. We'll see if that'll be overkill. Which of the two do you think is going to be the most and more successful of those two? Do you think? I don't know. I can't tell yet.  I'm hoping they're both phenomenal. Oh, yeah, I hope they're never want something to be terrible.  They really could. But anyway, let us know about this and about this filmmaker down below.


Hello and welcome to this session on data structures and algorithms. In this session, we will discuss another algorithm for sorting a very useful popular algorithm called quick sort. Quick sort is another instance of the divide and conquer approach to solving a problem. In particular, given a sequence s, quick sort is hinged upon choosing a pivot element x and based on this pivot element x, identifying the set of elements in s which are less than x and the set of elements in s which are greater than x. So, pick a random element x, then divide the n element sequence to be sorted into two sub sequences l and g such that l has elements less than x, g has elements greater than x. Now optionally, if there are multiple elements equal to x, you might identify a band here which comprises of more than one element and you call it e. For the rest of this discussion, we will assume that e has a single element because whatever we discuss for a single element also holds for multiple elements. This comprises the divide part. What follows is conquer. So, in conquer, you apply the same procedure of identifying a pivot element and identifying a subset of l that is less than x, l and the subset of elements that are greater than l and then applying conquer on each of those partitions again. Ditto with g, you will divide g into three parts. Finally, your resort to combine after having done all the conquer, you merge the result of the arrays l, e and g that are sorted. So, let us look at an example.  This will lead to a divide where you identified elements which are less than six that is 2, 1 and 4 and now you are invoking conquer through recursive divide on this sub-array. With 4 as the choice of a pivot element, you will get all the other elements of this sub-array to be the subset array to be partitioned. There is nothing more to do here, just two elements. So, we are not invoking conquer again. We could do the same thing on the right hand side, combine happens at every level. So, we have combined at the top level now, merging l, g and e. This is of course, after several more invocations of conquer and combine for the g part. So, this is the g that got combined. You have already combined all the sub-arrays in this sub-tree to give you l and finally, you invoke a combine of l, g and e at the top level where e is a singleton set 6. So, here is a quick sort algorithm, we have discussed an in-place implementation of quick sort. So, given input sequence S, pick a random pivot position P partition S into S 1, S 2. Now, we would like to do this in place, what does this mean? How do you partition S based on P into S 1 and S 2? This will be the subject matter of an exercise, a homework exercise. However, we will discuss a very simple implementation of partition S P, when P happens to be one of the extreme indices of S and your task is to generalize that to P when it is not one of the extreme indices. So, continuing, once you have identified S 1 and S 2 and as I pointed out, we will do this in place. So, S 1 and S 2 are basically indices into S, begin an index for S 1 and begin an index for S 2. The rest is basically the conquer, you invoke quick sort on S 1 and quick sort on S 2 recursively. You can also come up with a non-recursive version of quick sort. Now, since we have S 1 and S 2 in place and they are already sorted, finally you just need to merge S 1, S 2 and P. This merge is the same as before. You could also come up with a three way merge and exercise would be to come up with three way merge. It is actually a very trivial extension of what we have seen. So, merge is discussed already. Let us see partition and consider simpler case of partition when P is S dot length that is P is an index to the last element of S. So, let us discuss the case of partition S, P is the position with respect to which you want to partition and you want to give as output the two subsequences S 1 and S 2. We will assume that S begins at position L and ends at position P. What we mean is this is position L and this position P and our goal is to have all S 1 on the left and S 2 on the right. But we will assume that the pivot is with respect to this last element. Let us call it V. So, the first thing we will do is let set V to the value of S at position P and assume that P is the last position. What we do next? We will now do some bookkeeping. We will try to partition S in such a way that for a particular position I, let us say sitting here, I am going to ensure that S 1 is to the left of I and S 2 to the right of I. And how do I achieve that? Well, initially my I equals L minus 1. Basically it is before the first element, it is basically the wall because initially I have no clue of what S 1 is. So, everything is basically S 2 which is also wrong, we do not want that to hold. So, as we scan, we will correct S 1 and S 2. Our next step is as follows, we are going to keep track of elements, iterate over the elements through an index J. So, we will use an index J as iterator over elements of S ranging from L to P minus 1. We are of course not interested in scanning P when we compare with P itself. So, what we do is for J equals L, we need to start scanning from the first element to P minus 1. Now, you are going to check if this J, Jth element S j is indeed less than equal to V. So, as I pointed out our goal is for all k which are less than equal to I, we want S of k to be less than equal to V and for k greater than I, you would like S of k to be greater than V. Well, you can make it strict inequality. So, if S of j is less than equal to V, then you want to update your I, you now got hold of one element, one more element which is less than equal to V. So, you will say I equals I plus 1 and immediately swap entry at position I with position J and move on. So, you keep doing this till you reach the end. So, you just adjusting your index I, updating your iterator J, index I only gets updated when you find an element which is less than equal to V. Otherwise, you are perfectly fine keeping that element where it was. And finally, as promised before, you will need to exchange the element at position I plus 1 which is supposed to be greater than equal to P, but as such P is sitting at the right end. So, you can peacefully exchanges with the element at P which is basically V. So, your homework is to deal with the case when P is not necessarily the last index. So, what about P that is a random index? So, let us try and understand the running time of quick sort.  Well, the worst case is when the split requires most elements to be moved. So, when S P happens to be the unique minimum or the maximum element of S, you will basically need to move every other element. And this case is basically illustrated below. So, this case of unique minimum will mean lots of swaps. And what do you mean by lots of swaps? Basically, for an array of size n, you will have to do n minus 1 swaps. So, let us try and understand this. So, let us say you split S and it turns out that one of S 1 or S 2 has size length of S minus 1 and the other has size 0, which means you have to adjust length S minus 1 elements. And suppose, this is a case for every subsequence split that one of them has every element except one, the pivot. The pivot has always been chosen to be the least or the greatest. And this basically leads to a completely skewed binary tree. So, let us try and understand what the cost will be. So, for depth 0, the time will be n because you have to scan all the elements and do those swaps. And then at the next leg depth, what you will have to do is again scan n minus 1 elements and then n minus 2 elements at i depth is n minus i elements up to n minus 1 depth where you have one element. So, this is basically going to incur cost which is i equals 0 or depth equals 0 to n minus 1 and the time required will be n minus d. This is very similar to the worst case of insertion sort. So, runtime is proportional to sum and you can show that this is actually theta n square. How about the best case? What we will consider is a nearly best case. The best case is an instance of that. The nearly best case is that there is a fixed proportion splitting up at every level. So, at the first level n gets split into sets of size p n and 1 minus p n where p is some fraction between 0 and 1.  The best case would actually correspond to the merge sort algorithm where p is 0.5 where at every level the array gets split into 2 sub arrays of equal length. Now, what is the work done at every depth? Well, you have to anyways scan all the elements at every depth. You have to scan and merge elements. So, merge cost or even the split cost put together at the first level will be n. The second level again you will need to scan all these elements while merging. So, that will sum to p n plus 1 minus p times n. So, you sum up at every level. This will again give you n. The sum at each depth actually gives you n. So, this sequence is split based on a fixed proportion at each step. This will go on to a depth d such that p raise to d n is 1 or 1 minus p raise to d n is 1. We will only consider with the extreme cases. The first case when p is less than 0.5. So, we are concerned with the min of p and 1 minus p. So, the termination is basically when min of p and 1 minus p raise to d minus 1 times n equals 1. What does this mean? Well, this basically means when we take logs we will find that d minus 1 times log of either p or 1 minus p. We will stick the p case plus log of n equals 0. So, you can easily determine that d must be all of the order of log of n. So, the amount of work done at each level is basically theta n and we need to do this for theta log n steps. So, the total amount of time required is theta n log n. Alternatively, one could also solve the recurrence equation. The time required at n is basically upper bounded by the time required for the two partitions t of p and t of 1 minus p n plus a constant merge time c n. And by the master theorem, you could show that this would mean order of n log n. This also holds if the split proportion is upper bounded by p. So, it may not happen that the split proportion is always p or 1 minus p, but as long as there is an upper bound to that proportion which is p or 1 minus p, this analysis holds. How about the average case? Now, what does this average case mean? Well, it is not necessary that an upper bound for that proportion exists. What if we have this case?  But exactly the next level, the proportion is actually lost, which is you basically have split p n into some constant size left array and the remaining into the right. This k 1 of special interest is k 1 equals 1. Similarly, for the other side, let us take the special case that k 2 equals 1. This will mean that one element to the left and remaining elements to the right in both the left and right branches. Now, it is possible that even this kind of splitting holds for some number of iterations. Still finally, you go back to some fixed proportion again. So, the average case is basically interleaving of fixed proportion and worst case. This is a very loose way of stating what the average is. One can get a bit more rigorous and consider the partition algorithm. So, remember that the partition algorithm, we performed a swap and our swap was based on a subset of comparisons that were made. The actually cost incurred is through the number of comparisons of pairs i j made across all calls to the partition subroutine. What we can show is that the average number of comparisons of pairs i j made across all calls to the partition subroutine is order n log n. And this comparison is the most frequently invoked of all steps. While you can refer to the section 7.4.2 of the second edition of CLR, I am going to give this intuitive proof sketch. So, let us define a random variable X. X i j is 1 if S i got compared with S j. So, what am I talking about? Well, a subarray i j where i and j get compared. Now, the probability that i and j get compared is actually proportional. The probability that X i j equals 1 is actually proportional to the length of this subarray. What does that mean? Well, i and j get compared if either i was chosen as a pivot or if j was chosen as a pivot. It is not necessary for i and j to be compared at all if something in between got chosen as a pivot. So, therefore, probability that X i j is 1 is that i is chosen as pivot plus the probability that J is chosen as pivot. And when I say chosen as pivot, I am choosing it from the subarray S i j. Now, what is the probability of having i or j as the pivot?  These are two mutually exclusive events.  So, this is basically, first of all the random variable X is defined as a sum over all the values of i and all the values of j. j can only be i plus 1 until n of X i j. So, we are interested in the expected value of X, which is the sum of all possible pairs of comparisons. And we want, what is the expected value with respect to all these random choices? So, this is nothing but summation over i summation over j of expected value of E X i j. Now, what is the expected value of X i j? Well, it is basically 1 times the probability of X i j being 1 plus 0 times the probability of it being 0, which is not of interest. So, the expected value will basically be 2 divided by j minus i plus 1. Now, it turns out that with some amount of reordering and restructuring of the summation, we can simplify this expression. So, let us do that very quickly. So, the first thing I am going to do is substitute for j minus i, let me call it k. So, this is going to be a summation now over i, I will retain i as ranging from i equals 1 to n minus 1. But now, k will actually be allowed to range from all the way from 1 to n. So, my dependence of j on i has been eliminated through this. And fortunately for us, we had j minus i in the denominator. So, this gives us 2 divided by k plus 1. Now, I know that by decreasing the value of the denominator, I am only increasing this expression. So, I can show this upper bound over i and k summation over i and k 2 divided by k. Now, this is a well known expression. We know that this is basically upper bounded by log n. Now, we know that the summation inside is actually upper bounded by log of n. So, basically what we get here is summation over i of log of n and this summand is independent of i. So, this just gives you log n. So, I would encourage you to look at a more rigorous proof of this in the C L R book. Thank you.


I shouldn't be teaching this.    That little voice in my head that says, who do you think you are that you can do this? That voice that tells me I'm not enough. And that little voice is fear, right? Fear that I'm not smart enough. Fear that I might make a mistake. Fear that somebody will judge me. Fear of being found out. That's imposter syndrome. So I'm not alone in that fear. Just look around the room, right? 70% of successful people, 75% of executive women, 80% of CEOs, 84% of entrepreneurs, all report that they have felt like imposters at some point in their career. And my name is Dorie Kilner. And I coach mindfulness at my company Insightful Culture. But I've been in the Drupal community for over a well over a decade, about 15 years. Because I also run a Drupal agency called Slide of Hand Studios. And so I consider this a pretty successful skill portfolio, right? So I'm curious how I could hold on to this imposter syndrome fear, even when my experience proves that I am perfectly capable. So imposter syndrome has to do with feelings of self-doubt and personal incompetence.  So I recently had to recertify my Red Cross training. So I'm driving over to the facility to take the in-person training with the dummies and do your CPR on the dummies, right? And I get to the parking lot, and I go, wow, I feel like I should already know what I came here to learn. All the butterflies came up, like, oh, I don't know enough. I didn't prepare enough. I was already certified. And yet I still felt this way in the parking lot. So we want to prove that we're capable. And this is what helps us gain respect and admiration from people around us. That's a natural feeling, right? So we set our standards for success really high in order to gain that respect. And then we find, wow, we can't necessarily attain the standards that we set for ourselves. So this leads to a sense of futility, sometimes paralysis. We can't make a decision. Or we might even just see our successes as luck. Hey, I was in the right place at the right time. And we just try to hide all these imperfections that we have so people won't find us out. So we're going to start by listening to a short video. It's less than three minutes. That I think explains imposter syndrome really well. And then we're going to kind of dive into your personal experiences with imposter syndrome and how we can overcome those. So let's start the video. Even after writing 11 books and winning several prestigious awards, Maya Angelou couldn't escape a nagging doubt that she hadn't really earned her accomplishments. Albert Einstein experienced something similar. He described himself as an involuntary swindler whose work didn't deserve as much attention as it had received. Accomplishments at the level of Angelou's or Einstein's are rare, but their feeling of fraudulence is extremely common. Why can't so many of us shake feelings that we haven't earned our accomplishments or that our ideas and skills aren't worthy of others' attention? Psychologist Pauline Rose Clantz was the first to study this unwarranted sense of insecurity. In her work as a therapist, she noticed many of her undergraduate patients shared a concern. Though they had high grades, they didn't believe they deserved their spots at the university. Some even believed their acceptance had been an admissions error. While Clantz knew these fears were unfounded, she could also remember feeling the exact same way in graduate school. She and her patients experienced something that goes by a number of names, imposter phenomenon, imposter experience, and imposter syndrome. Together with colleague Suzanne Ims, Clantz first studied imposterism in female college students and faculty. Their work established pervasive feelings of fraudulence in this group. Since that first study, the same thing has been established across gender, race, age, and a huge range of occupations, though it may be more prevalent and disproportionately affect the experiences of underrepresented or disadvantaged groups. To call it a syndrome is to downplay how universal it is. It's not a disease or an abnormality. And it isn't necessarily tied to depression, anxiety, or self-esteem. Where do these feelings of fraudulence come from? People who are highly skilled or accomplished tend to think others are just as skilled. This can spiral into feelings that they don't deserve accolades and opportunities over other people. And as Angelou and Einstein experienced, there's often no threshold of accomplishment that puts these feelings to rest. Feelings of imposterism aren't restricted to highly skilled individuals either. Everyone is susceptible to a phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance, where we each doubt ourselves privately, but believe we're alone in thinking that way, because no one else voices their doubts. Since it's tough to really know how hard our peers work, how difficult they find certain tasks, or how much they doubt themselves, there's no easy way to dismiss feelings that we're less capable than the people around us. There is no easy way to dismiss feelings that we are less capable than those around us. So how did we get here? So maybe your family sent you messages about the importance of being naturally intelligent. How many of you were told, oh, you're so smart.    So if you have kiddos, yeah. It's really there's a long-term effect of telling people, oh, you're so smart. Maybe you needed to get approval from your family. So you found you had the strong need to please, and you did it through showing your accomplishments. You might have gotten mixed messages about achievement in school. Or you might be in a competitive work environment. Who's in a competitive work environment here? No one, right? Everyone. And sometimes that diminishes the importance of asking questions and saying, I don't know how to do that. So we live in this culture that reinforces this very toxic perception that you're born with your abilities. You just either have it or you don't. You're smart or you're not. And you learn to hide your struggles. And you learn to hide, you know, to just focus on being infallible, being perfect, instead of being open and accepting challenges as opportunities and just being human. These are all opportunities to learn and grow. We don't have to be afraid of being challenged. So you also, particularly as the studies have shown, if you are an outsider, if you feel like an outsider, if you're part of a marginalized group, you tend to get this greater feeling of imposterism. Because there's this large cultural issue about, you know, also just faking our knowledge rather than telling people we don't know something. And then if you combine that with being in a marginalized group, you feel like you're going to be judged. And so we have this culture where imposterism just festers because we're all afraid to speak up and ask for what we need. And then social media and technology, that makes it so much worse. Here's where we need to portray ourselves as happy and successful, right?  And you're like, well, hey, I've got to look like I'm doing all these great things.  So we're reinforcing the imposter syndrome by putting out this fake face into society. And we have this great pressure in society to look and feel confident and successful. And here we are being frauds pretending that we're confident and successful. So I'm going to flash some experiences on the screen and take a moment to read each one and assess whether it applies to you. So these are just going to flash up. I dismiss positive feedback and compliments and overreact to negative feedback. I hold myself to insanely high standards. I think my success is due to luck. I don't feel like I deserve success or praise. I'm a workaholic. I hold myself to high standards and will do everything possible not to make mistakes. I'm afraid I'll be found out as a fraud. These are the thoughts associated with imposter syndrome. It basically, whatever feeds this fantasy, that we can be perfect. So you start to lose perspective about what it takes to feel good about yourself. And because of that, you have all this fear, the fear spirals into anxiety and stress. So there's these two sides to imposterism. One is, you see yourself as a failure if you can't meet the standards, this perfectionist standards that you've set up for yourself. You just kind of fear failure. This is sort of that general fear of failure. So in order to reduce the risk of failure, you don't step out of your comfort zone or maybe you overwork to compensate for that. But on the other side, you're afraid that maybe your success will cause your coworkers or your supervisor to have greater expectations of you. So hey, if I show I can do this, maybe I'll get more responsibility and then somebody's gonna find out I'm a phony because ultimately they'll put me in a position where I can't perform. So you start to develop these coping mechanisms to manage your anxiety, right? So you might work too much to prove yourself. You might turn down opportunities for advancement. Women are notorious at this. They'll see a list of requirements for a job. If they don't meet 100% of them, they won't apply. Men, 40%, they're in the door. So again, it's different for different people and different groups, not to judge anybody on that, but that's the data that's coming out of the research. And so you might turn down all these opportunities for advancement and as you do that, again, the stress is building. Now our coping mechanisms, also they don't align with our business objectives. So there's a internationally renowned expert on imposter syndrome named Valerie Young. And she says anyone who leads, manages, trains or mentors other people needs to be aware of it. It's not a self-help topic, it's a business imperative. The behaviors associated with imposter syndrome will have associated costs for the employee and the organization. So you're actually holding back the organization and other people as well. So Dr. Young identified five types of imposters and knowing which category you fall into might help you manage your imposter syndrome. So we're gonna go through those five types right now. And the first is the perfectionist. This is the person who thinks 99 out of 100 is a failure and I remember in high school, in all the classes I was in, if somebody got a 99, they were devastated. Anyone here ever do that? It's like, oh, I got a 90, I got one wrong. What's wrong with me? Yeah, that's the perfectionist. So maybe you make a mistake in a presentation and you beat yourself up over it. You just want to be flawless all the time. Okay, so it's all about the process. Everything has to be right all the time. The next type is the expert. This is somebody who thinks that the quantity of their knowledge is what's important. So you see people who are constantly getting certification after certification, degree after degree, reading more and more books, getting more and more certificates, and they get held back because they feel they're never qualified enough. Yeah, you don't have 100% of the qualifications, you hold yourself back. The soloist. This is somebody who thinks that if they didn't do it all by themselves, they don't deserve any credit, okay? So if it just doesn't count. And these people tend to take longer completing tasks because they fail to ask for other resources. Maybe that sounds familiar to you. The natural genius, these are people who think that their intelligence is inherent. So they should have been born knowing how to be the perfect leader or the best coder, right? And if they have to struggle to master something, they can prove that proves I failed. I'm an imposter. This is hard for me. And this super human. This is the person who thinks they have to be perfect in every aspect of their life. So this goes beyond work. I have to be the perfect mom, the perfect dad, the perfect coworker, the perfect community organizer, the perfect partner all at the same time. Never giving anybody else a chance to do anything. It's all about me. So we need to get out of this cycle of imposterism and which is I'm gonna define here as the gap between your actual performance and your ideal standard. That gap in there is your imposter syndrome. Imposterism, it interferes with your ability to accept that you have achievements, that you have done positive things. And this starts to impact your psychological well-being. So you'll end up with burnout, emotional exhaustion, loss of motivation, your achievement starts to drop. And maybe you even feel guilt and shame. All of this just gets reinforced each time you go through a cycle of imposterism. And so the best way to overcome imposterism is to bring awareness to the narratives in your head. These stories and patterns that we carry along with us for our whole lives and learning how to detach from them. And by questioning these beliefs that we have about ourselves, that helps to weaken imposter syndrome rather than enforce it. This is the only way out folks is to start to think differently. There's no magic pill here. And you're not gonna walk out the door and say, I'm cured. So mindset theory is what we're gonna talk about to help you change how you think about imposter syndrome. And it's a set of ideas based on the belief of whether you were born with a fixed set of abilities or you believe you have the capacity to grow. So these beliefs can influence your behavior. If you believe that your abilities are fixed, you end up blaming yourself for any shortcomings. So you probably hear in your head, I should be able to do that. I should know that. I should have done that right. Lots of right and wrong black and white thinking. That is a fixed mindset. And you tend not to look for potential opportunities because when you start to learn something new, that's when you have to recognize that you're not perfect. You have to learn something different. So you see all your challenges as obstacles and you avoid them so nobody can see that you might fail. But if you embrace a growth mindset, you believe that you have the potential to develop. So you're more likely to focus on developing yourself if you have this new way of thinking. So challenges and feedback become opportunities for growth. And you start to value effort and motivation to learn. And this is what's gonna help you make long lasting changes and they're gonna be small changes, but they will stick.  Not just to be with what you are, but space to grow and become. And so your brain is capable of changing and developing new ways of thinking and this is called neuroplasticity. And this is the way that we can change our behaviors and our habits. Neuroplasticity allows us to change the neural pathways in our brains and then we practice these exercises over and over again. We start to see some success in overcoming imposter syndrome. So we're gonna discuss those five types of imposters again and how each one of those imposters can shift their perspective and start to reframe our thinking to overcome our imposter syndrome. So the perfectionist. So you're really intense people, perfectionists, super intense. And you don't have a real reality-based understanding of your capabilities. You just have to continuously drive. And I am not gonna tell you not to be a perfectionist. I truly, truly am amazed and appreciate people who really care about their work. So we're not saying don't care about your work.  Okay, so you're starting to interfere with other people's business priorities. I have absolutely seen this in the workplace where somebody feels like that report has to be so perfect and so right on that it comes in three weeks late and they were expected to do two other projects during that time and everybody's waiting for the work. So you really start to impact resources. So what you wanna do is start to identify what will it take? What's the reasonable amount of effort it will take to get a job done? So when you get a new task, that's how you need to reframe it. What is good enough? So we're not saying do shoddy work. Just saying start to notice that gap between where your mind goes, perfection and what is good enough for this particular job. And that's gonna depend. It's gonna depend on budget. It's gonna depend on the criticality of the work. It's gonna depend on a lot of things but at least you start to slow down and say that. Oh, it depends. Depends. The expert. So you're at the top of your high school class. This was me to go off to college and there's all these really smart people and gee, a lot of them were way smarter than I. All these exceptional people and then you start to doubt your own talent, right? So you begin to just pursue knowledge. It's like, oh, I have to catch up with everyone. I've gotta learn all this. You can't possibly know everything. Somebody once said you can never get to the end of the internet, right? So there's no expectation that you know everything. Nobody is expecting that of you. So your reframe is to say I don't have to know everything but I do have to know when it's too much for me. I do have to know when to ask for help. So there are some things we do have to know about ourselves but we don't necessarily have to know all the knowledge in the world, okay? The soloists. This is the one thing, if this resonates with you, it's really important to tell yourself that you need to include other people in your work. You just, you cannot work in a vacuum. And if you have trouble with this, one thing that's really helpful is to ask for some tasks in resource planning. So if you feel like you have to do everything yourself, start to learn about resource planning as a project manager, we were taught there were this three-legged stool, there's time, money and people. And they all have to come out and balance or the stool falls over. So if you're the kind of person that tends to work alone, see if you can find some tasks where people will help you learn how to plan resources so that you can see, oh well if we have more money then we can do it this way. If we have more people we can do it that way. You start to see that there are options, okay? And you also start to include other people. And when you get support from other people, guess what, they might know more than you and you can learn something from them. Or maybe they have a different perspective that you hadn't considered. So gee, it's just like our use cases where we should be going out and seeing the community of people who are going to use our products and having more voices in the room helps improve that use case, that's what this is about for you. And the natural genius, this is a person that really, really will benefit from a growth mindset. So it is not failure if you have to work on mastering a task. This is your reframe. Your challenge is an opportunity for growth, it is not failure. So you really need to move from that fixed mindset to the growth mindset. And so if you start a new project, maybe you start to keep a log each week. Here are new terms that I'm learning. Here are new people I'm working with. Here are new processes that I have to understand. And then meet each week with your supervisor, with a coworker and talk about these things. And this helps to normalize that knowledge gap that we have. Just to say, okay, this is something new and write it down and discuss it with somebody. And if you're the super human, attempting to be the best in every role that you're engaged in is not required.  Not only that, this sends out a really unhealthy message. It sends out a healthy message, especially if you're a supervisor and you have people reporting up to you or if you have kiddos, what message are you sending to people if you say you have to be perfect at everything?  So don't set yourself up for burnout, slow down, set some healthy boundaries, know when to say no to people and delegate. So if this is you, start to delegate to others and guess what, they wanna feel valued too. Delegation is not a burden if it's done properly. It helps other people feel valued. So when you start to challenge these negative thought patterns and your beliefs, this helps you separate your feelings from facts and help you discover new ways of relating to yourself. So it's all about the reframing, it's all about understanding different ways of thinking about yourself. So we're gonna discuss now some really effective ways to change your perspective. It's only once we can change our perspective can we begin to overcome imposter syndrome and I'll tell you it never goes away completely but we change our relationship to it. We change how we manage it and that will be a huge relief. So first of all, give it a name. It's imposterism, it's imposter syndrome. If something has a name, that means other people are experiencing it as well.  So give it a name first and then start talking to people. You're not alone. And we all are afraid that we're gonna have this conversation with a friend, a coworker, a mentor, a colleague and they're gonna say to you, of course you don't know how to do that. What were you thinking? Has anyone ever said that to their friends? No, not a hand went up. We don't say that to our friends, what do we say? You got this. We say you got this. Right before I started somebody sent me a text and said you got this. Which was like great, you just reinforced everything I'm doing. So their feedback is going to help you learn that other people feel the same way you do. Normalizing these fears. Now, many of us dismiss compliments that we receive. This is a tough one, they're like I don't deserve that compliment. So the next time somebody pays you a compliment, write it down. Give yourself the space to really appreciate it and thank them. Just say thank you, I appreciate that. It might feel like it's not enough, it might feel phony, but again it's changing those neural pathways in your head to acceptance that you are enough. Okay, so listen to those words. Now I suggest you write them down, you store them in a folder. Store them in an email, put them someplace.  And the next time you start to feel this imposterism, go look at them. Yeah, I think I can do this. Okay. Now, quieting your inner critic. Even if you're not experiencing imposter syndrome, lots of us have that inner critic in our heads, right? That one that says we're, you know, you did this wrong, you're, oh, I should have said this, I should have done that. Okay, we can't necessarily change this, but we can start to understand that that's human.  Humans are not perfect creatures. So we're all works in progress. And if you only remember the mistakes you make, you need to start practicing, thinking about what's good. So every time you start having these critical thoughts about yourself, I want you to take out a pen or pencil, not your laptop, nothing digital, actual physical writing, and write down three reasons why that's wrong, three reasons why that's a lie, okay? So once you start to see this evidence, it's going to change your bias towards negativity, okay? This allows us to start paying attention differently to what we think. So taking that space to break out and say, uh-huh, no, no, this isn't true, I'm not that person. And I highly recommend starting a meditation practice. This also helps you quiet your inner critic. Becoming aware of your breath and body can really calm down your nervous system. And this gives you that space that you need to become more aware of these stories and patterns that we all have in our heads. Those stories and patterns aren't true. We just keep perpetuating them in our minds because our brains really, thoughts are just thoughts. They're not necessarily the truth. And if we can detach from that, if we can accept that, then we have this spaciousness that we need to reframe and embrace the growth minds that we just talked about. So what I do when I am struggling with a task and saying, oh, I can't do this, oh, I don't wanna try that, I step back and I say, why do I believe that? Why do I believe this is true? And so a meditation practice helps give you that space to notice when you're starting to get out of control and go, okay, wait a second, why is that? Why am I thinking this? Why is that true? And this also helps you develop those new neural pathways. There's 40 years of science behind meditation and the development of neural pathways for change and regulation, regulation of our emotions, of our fears, of the blame. And I had this discussion the other day, believe it or not, with a group of meditation teachers. So they came to a breakout room, a virtual breakout room I was in where I was leading a discussion on imposter syndrome and somebody had the best view of this, they said, when I feel those butterflies in my stomach, instead of equating those with fear, I take a breath and I go, that's new growth, that's the butterflies are the end process of growth and development and they're freeing and it's exciting and beautiful. And I just kind of carried that with me into this session because I just thought it was just such a great, and this was somebody who actually came to the session because he had severe imposter syndrome. So he was afraid of actually leading meditation sessions as a meditation teacher. So those butterflies, reframe those butterflies as growth and excitement. And finally, when you believe that you're an imposter, you're sending out these signals that you don't trust yourself and subliminally other people pick up on that and they start to think, well, why should I trust you if you don't trust yourself? That's big, that's big. And it's unconscious, it comes from a primal part of the brain called the amygdala and people can sense each other's trust and ability. So noticing how to build your self-worth is kind of important in this regard. You have to embrace self-compassion over self-judgment. So the qualities of compassion can be cultivated. There are loving kindness meditations that you can learn to practice self-compassion. You can accept yourself as human and each day maybe taking some time out to say, who am I today? Who am I today? Opening some connection to the human experience, breaking your sense of isolation. So when I hear that little voice in my head, the one that says I'm not enough, I follow these three steps I'm gonna share with you now. So first, be aware. So I notice it's happening, just like when I was at the Red Cross Center, just like right before this session, just be aware. It gives us a space to remember to say, why do I feel this way? I've got this. Then I don't listen to the little voice. I write down three things as to why it isn't true. I try to find evidence. One thing I heard just this week, Sharon Salzburg, who's a meditation teacher, a well-renowned, especially on the East Coast, where I'm from, well-known meditation teacher, founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Boston, she said that when the voice arises, that self-doubt voice, that inner critic, she gives it a name. And so somebody in my session the other day said, oh yeah, I call mine Jamal. Okay, good. Give it a name. And then sit that inner critic down for a cup of tea. Say, Jamal, go over here, have a cup of tea, I got this. So just start to talk to your inner critic. And don't listen to what they're saying. And then take action. Move ahead, because there's consequences to listening to that voice, right? We need to shift to a growth mindset and see these challenges that we face as positive. And we need to say, okay, so if I have a misstep, if I make a mistake, that's okay. So you start to trust yourself that you know what you're doing. And simply say to yourself, I can do this. It really is about reinforcing those kinds of connections in your brain. So I wanna hear your stories. This is my contact information. I'm DM Kellner on Drupal. You can reach me there. You can call me anytime. You can email me anytime. I design workplace mindfulness programs. I teach, I speak. I wanna hear your stories about how you're coping with imposter syndrome. I wanna know whether this was helpful to you. So keep in touch, because I'm going to continue this as a topic of research for myself. And I want to understand how you're relating to the information that I'm sharing. So are there any questions right now that have come up? I'll give you a moment to think. Yes. What are your thoughts on cultural aspects like imposter syndrome, the forms of the field?  So is this a disperse game? So I'm just curious how you talk to people who felt that way. So that they're the things that you've seen work or are those common threads? It's a great question. So the question is, how do we deal with the cultural aspects of imposterism? If you don't look, sound, act, if you're not from the same background as other people. And I think this is super challenging. So thank you for bringing that up. It is harder, I think, when you're in an environment where you don't see yourself as same. It's very difficult to deal with that. And so like I said, you're not gonna leave this session with necessarily a solution. But over time, as you start to practice some of these actions, you can start to feel more confident in this is who I am and I deserve to be here as much as the next guy. But society really is toxic right now and is pushing on all of us. And I think that's a much bigger problem than just imposter syndrome. I think for me, I take things in small steps and small bites. So if I start to feel like an imposter, I know as a woman in tech and I started in tech 40 years ago and there weren't any women in tech. So I've experienced a lot of that myself as well. And it wasn't an easy thing. I didn't necessarily have these tools available to me at that time and I struggled a lot. But I do tell women I work with now, which might be not exactly along the same lines as the cultural things you're thinking about. But I do tell them that you have to be who you are. So don't give up yourself for somebody else. And that's just kind of general rules of engagement right now.  But practices like meditation do help to reinforce that the brain is capable of changing, which also means it's capable of making you feel like you are deserved in that space. And your own strength in your convictions are really what you have to fall on. You can't change other people. We see that now. It doesn't work.  Thank you for that question. Any other questions? Yes. I have a similar question about if you have any thoughts on whether your position sort of lends itself to you in the masters of there. So for example, I'm the, I'm on a team of engineers and I'm the non-engineer. So I come from a technical background. I did 10 years of doing technical things but then I decided I wanted to be the less technical person. But now I'm the less technical person on a team of brilliant engineers. And even though I love my work, sometimes it makes me feel sort of intimidated or when everyone's having a conversation about the really intense engineering work that they're doing, I'm just sitting there like, cool. And it just has that feeling of like, I don't feel like I'm as smart as that or as good as that or whatever because I just do different work on the team. But they could be really awesome guys. Yeah. Yeah, so the question is what do you do when you're feeling lesser than a colleague because they have different skill sets than you? But what are your skill sets? What do you bring to the team that they don't have? So again, it's a matter of recognizing that we don't necessarily have to compare and judge. So comparison and judgment are really detrimental to growth and to self-acceptance. So when we start to look around our society and see that, oh, well they have something I don't have or they did this great thing, what have I done?  So if you're a great project manager, if you're a great designer, it doesn't matter that it's not technical. Nobody put technical at the top of the pyramid and said we all have to meet this high standard of being technical, great technical developers, great coders, great integrators. I mean, yeah, maybe they're solving hard problems but who solves the hard problem if there's not enough money? The project manager does that. I remember when I was a project manager, I gave credit to my team all the time. Oh yeah, they did that, they did that. But when something hard comes up and it didn't work out quite so right, I was like, yeah, that was on me. So there are hard things that every individual, regardless of industry, regardless of position, regardless of rank, regardless of career path, everybody's got hard things, challenges and whatever and everybody has successes. So the more confident you are in your own successes and say, yeah, it might not come up at the table because you're discussing a technical problem but that doesn't mean that you're lesser. It means you're different and different is fine. We're all different. We all have different desires and different goals. I moved from tech into being a mindfulness teacher. I don't feel any lesser. I don't feel like I can't come to this conference that I've been coming to for a dozen years and not feel like I'm part of the community. So just keep reminding yourself, this isn't my time to shine. This is their time to shine. That's great. I have my time to shine as well. Did that help? Okay. Any other questions? The question is how did I talk myself off the ledge before I came up here today? I sold myself that I was prepared. That I did the research. I did the work. I put together the presentation. I practiced the presentation. I had done this before, not this particular presentation but I had spoken on the topic before and just myself, I know this. I know this. And I felt the butterflies and I remembered back to when my friend said the butterflies mean that you're growing. And that's all I did. And just said, no, not listening to you. Go have your cup of tea. I'm coming up here. I'm doing my thing. It really is just about that. It's just about when you are able to just reframe and change your mind and you're like, oh well no, that's hard. Of course it's hard. I'm not, none of this is simple. I'm not saying any of this is simple. But it does take time. It takes time for your mind to start thinking in a different way. But we see in the research that it's possible. So you just start thinking, okay, I've got this. I remember the compliments that I got the other day when I presented. It just starts to change those neural pathways and help you to just feel better. I mean, I'm not perfect. I have it. I still feel it every time I speak but it's not crippling anymore. Any other? Yes. I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing it. The question is, is it dangerous to become overconfident? So I don't know that we tend to see imposter syndrome in people who are highly capable. And so the ads of you becoming overconfident in your capabilities is probably not really there. You are competent.  And I don't think any of these kind of lead to arrogance. It's just a way kind of, I love the way you just said I talk, talking yourself off the ledge. It's not, I'm not looking for people to have this toxic positivity, this overconfidence and I can do anything attitude because part of it is knowing what you can't do and what you don't know how to do and bringing other people in to help you with that. So I don't think that we're not necessarily looking for you to just run out in the world and say, I can do anything. Just be confident in your own abilities and not allow them to keep you from getting advancement and getting the happiness that you deserve in your life. Yes. I was wondering if you had any tips for how to frame conversations when working with people who are, for example, perfectionists. Like I'm a project manager and I work with a lot of perfectionists and it's really hard to say like stop working on that. It's good enough because that can easily be interpreted as you were too slow or something like that. That means it's your time. How to tell someone how you're doing a great job but don't make it perfect. Right, right, good. The question is, how do you work with somebody who's a perfectionist without telling them, oh, you were too slow, not making it into a negative. And I think it's similar to what I said earlier where I would never tell a perfectionist to not be a perfectionist. Make sure they understand that you totally appreciate the effort that they put into their work. So when you're working with a perfectionist, you want them to maybe include them in some of the underpinnings of the project, let them see the timelines and the budget and the schedule and how it all fits together because I think project managers and supervisors, they have that perspective that their teammates don't necessarily have. When you start to include people in your perspective of the work because we all have different perspectives, they have the perspective of maybe I'm building this module or I'm doing this integration, whatever piece they're working on and they tend to have tunnel vision on that. And if you start to include them and here's where you fit in and this is why I need you to help me, I need you to help me figure out how much effort is reasonable for you to put into this. Because I've also seen somebody has a $50,000 project, they put in just as much effort of a $50 million project and these perfectionists don't see the difference. So help them to understand it isn't that I don't love your work, it isn't that I truly appreciate how much work you put into it but let me show you what I'm dealing with. Let me show you the constraints that are on this project and you tell me how much effort is going to work so that we come out at the right point. So I think involving people in discussions that let them see a different perspective, particularly perfectionists, helping them to see other perspectives is very useful. Anything else? I think we're pretty much at time. What I'd like to do is invite you to a couple of sessions that I'm leading the next four days. This is the first time we're doing chair yoga and meditation and triple con and I'm so excited to be leading these sessions. So if you're curious chair yoga, any type of yoga is actually moving meditation and then we're doing that Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday and Thursday that we're doing mindfulness meditation or I'll be leading the group. Each one of these sessions will be about 25 minutes to a half hour depending on whether you have to run to the next session. I don't wanna hold you, keep you from getting to your sessions but I invite you to join me and it's in a funny place in G129 and 130. You kinda go down the hall here and you'll see like a yellow tunnel. Walk into the light. Let's go towards the yellow tunnel and you'll find us right down there. There's signage at the beginning and end of the tunnel so I invite you to join if you're interested in any of these, learning a little bit more about meditation or reach out, happy to talk anytime and thank you so much.


Hello and welcome to the Grand Line. Review your source for everything one piece. Last week on The Arc of U we adventure to the greatest depths in the world to reach Fishman Island and this week we are emerging into the new world in order to set foot on the mysterious island of Hunk Hazard. Hunk Hazard is the 26th arc in the series consisting of 46 manga chapters and what really 46 anime episodes? That makes two arcs in a row where these numbers have lined up perfectly. I love it! The premise of this arc is simply that the straw hats receive a distress call almost immediately upon surfacing in the new world and Luffy, well being Luffy, takes this as a call to adventure. The setting of Hunk Hazard is incredibly compelling as the island essentially exists in a pokeball style formation with half the island being blazingly hot and mostly on fire while the other half is covered in snow and initially this is just another one of those bizarre one piece locations but we do eventually discover that this island served as the battleground for Al Kiji and Akainu's duel to decide who would go on to become the fleet admiral of the marines and I love that. Unfortunately that exterior appreciation of the island is about the extent of it. Hunk Hazard really suffers in my mind because it is essentially a deserted island and as a result offers very little depth as a location. Usually islands are filled with quirky inhabitant school animals and unique landscapes come together to form a strong identity. Hunk Hazard has very little to none of this.  I mean even Long Ring Long Land had some really cool long creatures. The most interesting thing Hunk Hazard has to offer is the lab which gets really visually flat very quickly. There are some points of interest like the sad production room and where they keep the kids but for the most part the lab is just slab after slab of miscellaneous metal wall. So the heavy lifting of Hunk Hazard falls onto the characters and we have some amazing familiar faces reintroduced to us during this arc. First and foremost Trafalgar lore. He had been one of my favorite members of the worst generation ever since their introduction so to have him being the first one to appear in the new world suited my desires just fine. And I think that Hunk Hazard is a huge career highlight for lore. His design was on point, his fights were amazing and he was presented as a real counterweight to Luffy. Someone very much on his level in terms of the world and even someone who could hold the title of protagonist in terms of the narrative. And then there's the eventual alliance that he forms with Luffy in order to take down Kaido. Speaking of and this feels a bit ridiculous in retrospect but back when this was coming out weekly Kaido was the most unexpected emperor to be chosen as a target from our perspective. I mean Big Mom made sense because Luffy had picked a fight with her on Fishman Island, Blackbeard was also a natural choice and there were even a lot of theories going around about how it could have been shanks. But Oda pulled one over us once more and gave us Kaido. The emperor we knew absolutely nothing about at that stage so I found that to be a very nice twist. But the other returning highlight of this arc is Smoker. It had been far too long since this man had had some proper involvement in an arc and just like lore the timeskip had done wonders for his design. Unfortunately unlike lore this arc was not Smoker's finest hour. The sheer amount of times this guy got wrecked during this arc makes me feel incredibly sorry for Smoker. Seriously he was beaten by lore, Caesar, Virgo and finally Dolph Lamingo. I thought this was a real shame because Smoker was a vice admiral now and I was really keen to see what kind of powerhouse he'd become. But yeah he was used as more of a podium for other characters to shine. But with Smoker came the always delightful Tashigi and it was great to see her back but I wish he had a bit more to do. The claim to fame during this arc is delivering the final blow against Monet which is pretty damn awesome but she's still very much suffered from the women in one piece syndrome and this is especially true when it comes to the whole body swap scenario. I will say that in general I thought this was pretty hilarious and I love seeing Smoker get extraordinarily frustrated into Tashigi's body but in the end I feel like it was more of an excuse to show off Tashigi's assets. And I feel quite similarly about the straw hat body swap as well when it comes to Sanji being put into Nami's body. Although I did really love when Sanji was forced to use Blue Walk in a body that he was unfamiliar with. The greatest body swap by father has to be Frankie being put into Chopper's body simply because of the fantastic fusion of facial expressions. I think that a lesser artist would have really struggled with this as a plot device because capturing the personality of one person while using the established tools aka the body of another is no easy task but Oda pulled it off phenomenally. I do have one particular criticism though when it comes to the anime because they made the decision to keep the straw hat voices even while they were in another body and I get why they did that because it may have gotten very confusing to keep up with over the course of a weekly serial and you know some stage viewers may have even forgot it was everything but I can't help but wonder what it would have been like to have Nami's voice actor playing Sanji saying all of the perverted lines and taking on his mannerisms and I would have loved to see that for every body swap for a true unique experience with these characters who we've known for over 600 chapters at this point but transitioning right along the biggest letdown in terms of characters for the arc is the primary antagonist Caesar Clown. I like this guy quite a bit these days but back in punk hazard he just annoyed me. I found his design quite off-putting and never once did I feel like he was a proper threat to the straw hats.  In fact the entire fight between Luffy and Caesar is a bit meh although I will admit that it is very satisfying to watch him being punched and thankfully that happens a lot. Also rather thankfully Caesar is well supported by the secondary villains Virgo and Monet. Virgo in particular lends a lot of credibility to the threatening events of punk hazard through an immediate display of raw power and one of the finest choreographed fight sequences I can recall in the manga where he takes on both lore and smoker in the sad production room. Sadly I don't think the sequence was particularly well realized in the anime but the way it flows in the manga is pure perfection. Virgo also happens to have one of my all-time favorite character quirks in the series whereby he consistently just keeps getting things stuck to his face you know like a spoon or an entire steak. Furthermore I think it's phenomenal that this ridiculous quote doesn't lessen his threatening vibe at all as a villain. For her part Monet also plays a great antagonist but they captivating design and a mysterious personality. You're never quite sure what she's thinking but it certainly is ominous. I also quite enjoyed how she handled herself in combat using her abilities brilliantly having understood that she would not have been able to win in a head-on fight against either Luffy or Zoro. Of course the greatest shame in regards to both of these villains is that by the end of the arc they die while characters like Caesar live on. Although I will applaud the decision to kill them off because it does well to display the danger of engaging in the new world whereas while we were in paradise nobody died like ever. Virgo and Monet also serve to set up the major antagonist of the next arc Dolph Lamingo although the resounding defeat of Buffalo and Baby Five towards the end of the arc did lessen this build up somewhat. But right there is one of my major problems with reading through this arc in retrospect. It is almost entirely a feature length setup arc. It sets up the conflict on Dressrosa but it also serves to further some plot for Whole Cake Island primarily through Caesar as well as activating the future events of Buono through the Samurai and the whole alliance against Kaido. So I do appreciate everything that Punk Hazard did for future events but taking it for what it is alone I... let's put it this way if I ever remake my top five worst arcs list which I feel I probably should after this arc review series is complete Punk Hazard would most definitely be there at the moment. And a lot of that comes down to factors I haven't discussed yet as well like the whole plotline with the children being experimented on. I might just be a terrible terrible person but I never cared for these kids one bit and it was always a horrible drag when they came into focus. I mean the addiction angle was kind of interesting and horrifying but in general I just don't care. Another thing that felt completely flat for me were the Yeti Cool Brothers. Fair of characters I am convinced never needed to exist. They were entirely irrelevant to the greater plot and served pretty much just to create some canon filler events. I honestly don't know why Oda wasted time and energy putting them into the story. I mean even Brownbeard had a greater purpose and I don't like him either but I do appreciate his presence and actions during the Punk Hazard arc. Now here and then there's Smiley. He serves as sort of the big world-ending disaster on the island akin to the bomb in Alabaster or the Noah on Fishman Island and once again I found this aspect of the arc pretty underwhelming. Despite how deadly chemical weapons can be in reality I just don't find them as threatening as say your run of the mill bomb that goes boom. But on a positive note the last thing I want to touch on is the appearance of both Dolph Lamingo and Cousin at the tail end of the arc. One of the most memorable panels of this entire arc for me is Dolph Lamingo traveling through the air and very ominously saying I'm on my way.  As did Cousin's post-time skip appearance and the whole intrigue around the fact that he had left the marines and was now a rogue agent. Plus the dude was now traveling by penguin so you know that's pretty awesome. But all in all Punk Hazard was fine for what it was. I just really wish it didn't take a whole 46 chapters to tell its story and I know that's a really laughable complaint considering the immediate next arc to come but Punk Hazard just felt really drawn out. I think that quite a bit could have been cut out and it still would have accomplished its goals in a more condensed manner. That pretty much does it for Punk Hazard. Next week we will be embarking on the longest arc in one piece history as the Alliance of Straw Hat, Luffy and Trafalgar Law target Don Quixote Dolph Lamingo on the island of Dressrosa. If you enjoyed this video then feel free to like, favorite or subscribe and if you are in any way keen on supporting independent creators and also feel free to check out my Patreon, Discord server or Twitter. Links to it are in the handy description below. Finally, please do comment with your thoughts on the Punk Hazard arc. This has been the Grand Lone Review and I'll see you next time.