Book Review: Outliers
The most recent book I finished was Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I really enjoyed this book. Gladwell covers various instances of success who are seemingly "outliers" at first glance. He delves deeper into the subjects, exposing each person's unique circumstances that allowed them to succeed. As someone who wants to consider herself a "success" someday, I was slightly disheartened at the thought of not being able to "make it" through my own hustle. At the same time, I realized all the people and sheer luck that has led to my success so far.
In Outliers, Gladwell explains why being at the slightly older age range of your learning or sport group gives you an edge. He uses a team of hockey players as an example. The difference lies in childhood--if you're a few months older, you tend to be bigger . When these children get onto the better teams because of their sheer size, they get better coaching and more time playing. This pays big dividends when the children are older (and everyone is about the same size), but by then, the younger children are far behind in practice time.
Gladwell then looks at 10,000 hours of practice doing whatever it is you want to do. 10,000 hours of playing hockey, of playing an instrument, or programming. It is sometimes considered that 10,000 hours will lead you to be an expert in that area. The Beatles played for HOURS on end, in rough conditions, to get better at performing, to get better at playing with each other, to just get better. Of course, sometimes you need a little bit of luck to be able to get in 10,000 hours of practice.
This was the case for Bill Gates. Young Bill Gates enjoyed programming, but it was thanks to a donor at his school that they were able to program at such a young age. After this, he and a few friends were able to go to the local college and program. Even more luck, at college, the computer had a bug, allowing students to get around the time limit, and rack up more hours of programming practice. Bill Gates had the drive and the circumstances to allow him to program late into the night. All this can be traced back to the initial donation to his school, which initially got him into programming. Sometimes schools can make all the difference in children's lives.
There are arguments about how to get children's grades higher, how to get Americans on par with Asians in math, how to get girls more interested in math and science. Some people argue it is the school. Some people argue it is the parents. Some people argue it is the teacher. Malcolm brings race (a little taboo) and circumstance into the picture. Sometimes being raised with parents who worked hard to get a stable life led to children who knew how to work hard to get what they wanted (to be a lawyer, a doctor). Some schools push children to work harder, such as going to school on Saturday, having a shorter summer break, or having longer school hours. This time allows teachers to teach at their own pace, to give children extra help in subjects that need persistence and work (math). Sometimes LANGUAGE makes math easier (read the book to learn how having shorter words for numbers or more logical words for numbers makes math more logical for non-English-speaking cultures).
These are just a few examples that Gladwell exposes that lead to success. He even tells the story of how his mother had luck and circumstance to succeed. Read the book to learn more about how "outliers" aren't really "outliers" in the sense of an individual who works specifically hard and gains success through his or her own means--every one of them has had help or luck.
Luck can be the difference in everything. I was lucky enough to see a set of two books in second grade for 99 cents. They were How to Get Straight A's and How to Do Better In School. I can't explain why school was important to me, but I wanted to be smart. I didn't want to be in the slow math or reading group. I didn't want to get bad spelling grades. I think these books allowed me to develop better study schools early in life.
I was lucky that my parents worked hard to send me to private school. This is where I heard about the U.S. Naval Academy. This is where I was able to show up at cross-country practice, almost die on the first day, and be allowed to continue to come back to practice. I ended up being okay at running (good enough for a few local scholarships and to run at USNA). Being good at running (and getting straight A's) helped me get into USNA, and I had four of the best years of my life there. My military career was an utter failure (personal/medical issues), but the military was awesome enough to allow me to gain job experience through the Operation Warfighter internship program. After that, my boss was even more awesome to get me a job upon separation from the military. I'm still trying to do better, to learn more, to figure out what I want to do with my life, but I can't complain. Life is quite a ride.
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