In the story Outliers, Malcom Gladwell touches upon subjects and theories that effect countries, cultures and people. Gladwell has a theory of why things are the way they are and then backs these theories up with facts and stories from people’s lives. Gladwell’s non-fiction book has a way of connecting to my life and many others.
One point that Gladwell made is about age and that the month you were born dictates your future in sports such as hockey. Also he stated that the year you were born can determines how successful or how much money you will make in your life. This currently relates to my life. Right now it's a very exciting time for many kids around my age. All the talk is about if you have your liscense or when you will be getting it! The month you were born is directly corilated to you being one of the first or last kids in your grade to get their liscense.There are some advantages to this like becoming more independent sooner or having to wait longer, or the hockey players being better and having more time to practice (22). When we get our permit in lets say Janruary, the three months advantage a person can have can make them a better driver "But they [hockey players] also got a big head start, an oppertunity that they neither deserved or earned.". This advantage was given to them by their parents. Gladwell figured this out by studying hockey players, but he also researched people like Bill Gates and the 10,000 rule.
In life it's not a supries to anyone that the harder you work, the better you get at something. Dedication is key to wanting to be being good at something and even the best. Gladwell's theory is that after a certain age, children split and some become the best and the others, well, don't. "And what's more, the people at the very top don't just work harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder". (39) This idea is related to my life currently and was more so when I was younger. I used to be in band and Gladwell mentions that the people with amazingly good talents worked harder and longer to get where they are now. I found this to be completely true. I played the saxophone and we were divided into two groups. We all knew that group one was the good group and group two was not. This was known beause the people in my group just did what we could do to get by while the other group practiced and worked until they could play their music with no errors. These are the people that are still playing and are experiencing greatness."The amatures never practiced more than about three hours a week...The professionals, on the other hand, steadily increased their practice time every year until by the age of twenty they, like the violinists, had reached ten thousand hours". (39) Life is full of people who have their goals set and know what they want. They know that they want to become the best they can be and they do this by practicing 10,000 hours jsut like The Beatles. Our favorite celeberties and singers didn't get good at what they do over night. "We [The Beatles] played seven nights a week. At first we played almost nonstop till twelve-thirty, when it closed, but as we git better the crowds stayed until two some mornings." (49) 10,000 hours of work is where you get to greatness.
Sometimes we don't have a choice with how successful we will be like the hockey players born in August. They couldn't have controled when their birthday was so that they are as "good" as the players born in Janruary. Sometimes we just get chances in life that help us become who we are. I was lucky enough to grow up in the middle class and have the education that I have. "Poor kids may out-learn rich kids during the school year. But during the sumer, they fall far behind."(258) Some kids only have the chance to learn during school but being raised in a middle class family has helped me learn all year round from the outside influences that I can encounter. Martia would not have had the chance for an education with out KIPP. The harsh schguel of a twelve hour day every day got Martia on the right track with education. "The way she was saying it made it sound so hard I thought I was going to prision."(263) Martia thought KIPP was going to be really hard, and it was. She now knew what it was like to be grown up at age 12. My school experiences (thank god) have not been anything like this but I know the intense schguel and how much Martia has to work to keep up her new life.
Gladwell comes up with ideas that I think would take a long time to understand get would take a good length of time to get enough data to confirm his thesis'. A lot of them relate to my life and the people around me. The birth month and the 10,000 hours of work have a lot to do with every day life. Your birth month along with chances are not something you can control but you can control the amount of hours you work on something to become professional.
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