During my sophomore year of college, I dropped out of the Computer Science major. I love numbers, I love logic, I love programming, but it was really lonely spending 20+ hours a week per class in the lab. I was the only girl.
Sometimes I feel like the business school was a step down. The people were a bit more diverse, but they weren't really geeky like me. And they all seemed convinced they were going to get rich easily.
But that is neither here nor there.
One thing I loved about the business school was the psychology. I loved the Econ 101 concept of utility. We read all sorts of interesting books and articles bout ethics and human relations and marketing and supply chain management ... I learned to LOVE the brains behind Toyota and McDonald's, although I still never visit McDonald's. What I learned was really stinking cool.
Last week, my sister got a book in the mail from a friend she made while interning at Wal-Mart in Arkansas. It was called "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely. I highly recommend it if you're at all interested in stuff like that.
Areily is a Behavioral Economics professor at MIT. 'Nuff said!! In the book, he does several studies and tests things like context (putting things in nice china vs. styrofoam cups) and anchoring (pick a random activity, like poetry reading, and ask one group how much they'd pay you for a poetry sitting and ask the other how much you'd have to pay them to listen to you read poetry) and does an interesting study on the psychological value of FREE!
I think we'll be buying copies of this and sending it around the family at Christmas time. ;) It's totally our sort of thing!
This book also reminded me (okay, it reminded my friend Katie who reminded me) of another book that came out a while ago, called Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. It talks about the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill (assuming you have natural talent, too.) For example, you can compare a whole big group of people who have played the piano for the same number of years and divide them into groups based on their perceived skill level. The highest level? Practiced more. Go figure!
And by practiced more, I mean significantly more. You don't just fall into being a master of something. YOU WORK AT IT. There is also a bit of luck invovled, too, like when you start a business you have to be in the right place at the right time. Bill Gates dedicated much of his life to computers. Same thing with Steve Jobs. They have the skill, the drive, the dedication, the vision, everything. It's hard work to become that successful.
It kind of makes me think there is a snowball effect with wealth. This is a really dorky analogy, but think of The Sims. You start out really poor and get a job and spend FOREVER developing your skills so you can advance in your job to be able to buy all the cool things you want. (Unless you cheat. HAHA.) Then you reach a point where you've developed those skills, advanced in your career, and you're just rolling in dough and money is coming in and you're running out of things to do with your time and your money. (Thank you, Bill Gates, for donating so much to education!) At this point, you either start another game or find a way to make your Sim starve to death just for fun. @__@;
Anyway. That was another tangent. It's what I've been thinking about lately.
Last night, Mark was playing Starcraft with our friend, Stu. Stu's roommate was studying for the GRE and was asking us our opinions on some of the practice problems he was doing. They were those word/logic/comparison questions, like, "shoe is to running as ____ is to ____" and you have to choose the best answer. I LOVE those sorts of tests! It almost made me want to go take the GRE for the heck of it! I MISS SCHOOL!
You want to know a way to turn off your geeky date? Tell her she's smarter than you are (and you're 23 and she's 18). Want to know a great way to compliment your geeky wife? Tell her she might score better on the GRE than you did ... and you scored perfect on the math section.
My neighbor, Tammy, said she read a study about the kids who scored in the highest percentiles on the ACT and SAT. What did they have in common? All of them read or had their parents read to them for two hours a day growing up. Let me repeat that: TWO HOURS. A DAY. That is a LOT of reading. It's no wonder these kids ended up bright - they worked for it!
I know lots of people who are (sorry!) less bright. There's nothing wrong with that. There are some people who seem to expect that above-average success will simply fall into their laps. Or they think that simply working hard will yield results. They don't realize there's also a few elements of creativity, dedication, talent, skill, and luck involved. And some skills are more lucrative than others because they are deemed more valuable to society.
Welcome to lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average ...
It's a lot easier to make money as a surgeon or an engineer than it is to make money as a photographer or a musician. Just sayin'. And money isn't everything, either. Do what you love, manage what you have, and everything else will generally work out.
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