A university student majoring in physics, Matt Kafker also pursues a variety of academic interests in his spare time. Driven to learn French and Spanish, Matt Kafker’s fascination with foreign languages and linguistics, which can have several cognitive benefits and benefit one’s professional and personal life, is evident.Knowing more than one language is not only a potentially indispensable skill in an ever-shrinking world, but also beneficial to the brain’s chemistry. In recent years, studies have shown that learning another language can actually fend off certain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. It also develops additional grey matter, which can improve the ability to multitask and increase attention span.Moreover, bilingualism can open new creative pathways in the mind and make a person more apt to relate to and understand foreign cultures. Those who speak different languages can deal more readily with environmental changes and are more able to immerse themselves during international travel. Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has shown that bilingual people will emphasize specific character traits, depending on the language being spoken.
A graduate of Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, Matt Kafker now attends university in pursuit of a postsecondary degree. In his free time, Matt Kafker enjoys a variety of activities, including reading. He lists David Foster Wallace among his favorite authors. Born in 1962 in Ithaca, New York, David Foster Wallace was a prodigious novelist and essayist whose often dense writing is filled with a mix of dark humor, ironic wit, sadness, experimental language, and digressions in the form of footnotes. His best-known work is Infinite Jest, a massive novel comprising nearly 1,100 pages that are annotated with footnotes throughout. The publication of Infinite Jest in 1996 established Wallace in the literary world and attracted a devoted following of readers. The novel also caught the attention of many critics and earned Wallace a spot on a number of “best of” lists across the country. Although fans and critics anxiously awaited Wallace’s next novel, he never published another one in his lifetime. His writing following Infinite Jest was mostly in the form of short fiction and nonfiction pieces, published in collections such as A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Over the course of his career, Wallace received several awards and accolades, including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant and three O. Henry Awards. After battling depression his entire adult life, Wallace committed suicide in 2008. The novel he had been working on at the time of his death, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011.
Alongside his academic activities, university student Matt Kafker pursues various hobbies and interests, including reading and traveling. Matt Kafker also enjoys listening to the music of a number of bands, including Bon Iver, Radiohead, and Car Seat Headrest.Car Seat Headrest was formed in Leesburg, Virginia, by guitarist Will Toledo, who began recording songs in his family’s car as a teenager. Toledo’s brand of angsty guitar-based rock carries on the tradition of indie heroes like Stephen Malkmus and Robert Pollard. Prior to the release of Car Seat Headrest’s first label-produced album in 2015, Toledo had already self-produced and released 11 albums on the music platform Bandcamp. Put out by Matador Records, his 2015 debut studio album, Teens of Style, features a handpicked selection of songs from Toledo’s Bandcamp catalogue. In 2016, Matador released Car Seat Headrest’s sophomore studio album, Teens of Denial. Featuring Toledo backed by an actual band, the album includes fan-favorite tracks such as “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales,” “Fill in the Blank,” and “The Ballad of the Costa Concordia.” Since releasing Teens of Denial, the band’s output has included the singles “War Is Coming (If You Want It)” and “Beach Life in Death,” which came out in December 2017.
