Further Confessions of an Outlier
Further Confessions of an Outlier
About five or so weeks ago, I made this confession:
About five or so weeks ago, I made this confession:
"I graduated high school eighth in my class, and then proceeded through undergraduate and graduate school to achieve a doctorate, almost exclusively making As along the way and being regularly praised for my academic ability. But let me pause for a moment about those K-12 years. "To this day, I cannot recall really trying in school—not time spent studying or finding anything asked of me being that difficult. In fact, especially when I took standardized tests, I always felt I was doing something wrong; it felt like cheating to zip through tests and score in that rarefied air of the 99th% percentile."The point of that confession was to confront and reject the rugged individualism myth that drives much of the "No
