The article has the most perfectly placed advertisement box. I read...

I sat on the Yale College admissions committee a couple of years ago. The first thing the admissions officer would do when presenting a case to the rest of the committee was read what they call the "brag" in admissions lingo, the list of the student’s extracurriculars. Well, it turned out that a student who had six or seven extracurriculars was already in trouble. Because the students who got in—in addition to perfect grades and top scores—usually had 10 or 12.

...and then there was the advertisement box. My blood was starting to boil because I have a serious philosophical problem with having to do the "right" kinds of extracurricular things to impress an admissions board to get into college. OK, it's sour grapes, but that is a college I'm not interested in attending (ditto for Google).

Then the kicker:

So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, "excellent sheep."

Amen! The world needs plenty of excellent sheep, but I'm not interested in being one of them.

I always thought it was really stupid and soul-numbing to do have the "right" activities to impress someone too, so I mostly ignored all the advice and did what I wanted during high school. Then I applied to one of the elite colleges mentioned in the article (mostly because my parents threatened to kick me out of the house if I didn't at least apply to college, and if you're gonna go through the trouble, might as well go for the top) and got in anyway.

Same thing with Google: I always figured that I wouldn't want to work at any place that cared where I went to college. But then I applied anyway, as an experiment, got in, and it turned out I loved it.

If I had to give some unsolicited advice (yeah, modulo luck and all that), I'd say to live your life the way that makes you happy, but if it happens to make some elite institution happy too, why not give it a try? There are some very real benefits to a college like Amherst or an employer like Google. While they're not worth making yourself miserable over, they can be a pretty nice perk if your interests lay in that direction anyway.

Also, I've found that what high-caliber institutions really want are people whose passions make them come alive. For exactly the reasons the article mentioned. There are lots of sheep that want to get into Google for the six-figure salaries and 3 meals a day and resume boost. There are comparatively fewer who want to get in because it's like being a kid in a data-mining candy shop. Organizations want the latter kind, who're usually the ones with the clearest ideas of what they want to get out of life.

And if they don't, fuck 'em.

So, to summarize your experience or advice: At the center, figure out what _you_ like and do what engages you naturally. On the fringes, keep a portfolio of small bets with the outside world and see what engagements come out of that. I like that advice, seems like a good way to wander through life.

Exactly.

It occurs to me that this is a good way to run a startup too. Figure out what your core competency is and do that. But on the fringes, keep exploring other opportunities and see what may come of them.

My impression of the top colleges way back when I was applying was that they all said they valued depth over breadth. Eg near-perfect academic record, top test scores, and unusual commitment to or accomplishment in just a few activities.

However, anecdotal experience later made me question the reality of that, and suspect admissions officers are still overly impressed by teens who sleep four hours a night and have 10 or 12 relatively shallow extracurriculars that require little more than the ability to manage lots of busywork and multitasking.

Which of course is what most of the corporate workforce has become - lots of 'managers' schedules'. Coincidence?

Reminds me of what pg said in one of his essays, to get into a good college you don't have to impress the professors: you have to impress the admissions officers, and they aren't nearly as smart. They are the NCOs of the academic world.

<Former Ivy League admission officer>

If you let the professors pick the kids, you'd get very few "leaders" coming out of the elite schools and lots of eggheads and tinkerers. Knowing this, the schools use recent grads and professional bureaucrats whose job is to carry out mandates handed down, not by faculty, but by the trustees, who have a broader, and more worldly perspective on who should be admitted.

It's interesting that eggheads and tinkerers are not perceived as leaders or leadership material by those recent grads, professional bureaucrats, and trustees. Why is that?

In this day and age where we consider everything a learnable skill, from ice hockey (Gladwell) to math (Asian culture) to seduction (Neil Strauss et al), why are eggheads and tinkerers seemingly considered unteachable in the ways of leadership (real leadership, as espoused in the article)?

I don't agree with the comment you're replying to, but wanted to point out that there's a huge difference between being teachable and trying to learn. The "eggheads and tinkerers" are perfectly teachable, but the labeling presumes dilettantes who don't seek out either mastery or leadership, or a role in the greater world.

You can inspire somebody like that to change, but it's a lot more work than taking somebody who's already seeking it on their own.

Full disclosure, I was denied by every Ivy League school I applied to

schools use recent grads and professional bureaucrats whose job is to carry out mandates handed down, not by faculty, but by the trustees, who have a broader, and more worldly perspective on who should be admitted.

Admitted according to what criteria? I'm genuinely curious.

__

In my experience, for the most part success in pre-collegiate academia is overwhelmingly contingent on your willingness to follow directions and do a lot of busy work. There are exceptions of course, like a challenging math class or thought-provoking history class, but these are, as I said, the exception not the rule.

Most kids don't give a shit about learning - they care about getting good grades. And from what I'm reading in this speech, this is also an issue in Ivy League schools. This seems like a negative feedback loop. Maybe something needs to change?

Also, you say that we'd get very few "leaders" if we let professors pick the kids. Well the majority of these leaders, many of them from Ivy League schools, are dogmatic, stick-to-the-talking-points idiots, incapable of or unwilling to produce original thought. I think just what we need are more tinkerers.

Anyway, I was always under the impression it was primarily professors who sat on admission boards. But then again I never bought any of those "how to get into college" books.

> they aren't nearly as smart. They are the NCOs of the academic world.

You clearly don't have much experience with NCOs.

I was just about to say the same thing - usually it's the officers who are clueless, thinking that a year at RMA Sandhurst means they know more than a battle-hardened Sergeant or Sergeant-Major.

In any army in the world, call an NCO 'sir', and they'll respond: "Don't call me sir; I work for a living."

('Sir' is usually reserved for officers, and in UK & Commonwealth countries, Warrant Officers Class 1 & 2)

The author's characterization of leadership sounds to me a lot like clinical depression. This isn't altogether surprising to me, as I keep stumbling upon pieces of research or philosophy suggesting that depression has an evolutionary purpose. I think the essential property is that a depressive isn't able to ignore important problems the way a normal, functional person is able to, especially long-term problems. The hitch is being able to address those problems, rather than being overwhelmed by them.

I listened to the 2004 intro to Psych lectures by professor Wolfe at MIT. I thought it interesting that he pointed out that depressives have a more accurate portrayal of reality and how thing really are than "normal" people.

But did he say how much of this was because they themselves make it this way? If you're depressed about e.g. not being able to get a girl then you'll probably do things that make you appear creepy and you won't be able to get a girl.

Contrast that with a normal person who believes in themselves. Sometimes they're wrong but they're not affected by (negative) self fulfilling prophecy.

I don't know what Wolfe said, but something I was reading a while back said (to a first-order approximation, anyway): optimistic/non-depressive people take credit when things go well and blame things beyond their control when they don't go well. Depressives tend to own up to their responsibility for things that don't go well much more accurately (by "accurate" they meant, as I recall, what impartial observers would agree would be the case).

For example, an officer at Big Investment House would credit his own brilliance for making bajillions of dollars, but blame the collapse of his foolish enterprise on Regulators/Sun spots/Everybody ELSE being too goddamn greedy.

EDIT: typo office -> officer

I'm still not convinced. I had a bought with (suicidal) depression for several years (brain injury) and it's true that I didn't take credit for things I didn't do, but instead I blamed myself for everything, even things way beyond my control (e.g. "It happened this way because you deserve to be miserable"). Many things I evaluated to being beyond me, and sure enough they were. Because having convinced myself I couldn't do it or wasn't worthy, any effort I made was half-hearted or actually negative. Which lead to more depression.

Now maybe I'm too optimistic about what I can do sometimes, but I think you get further that way because sometimes you talk yourself into things that "on paper" should have been beyond you.

Maybe I was more accurate before. But it was because I was skewing the results. Also note that it's easier to think you can't do something and then fail when you could have succeeded than to think you can do something and succeed when you otherwise would not (i.e. it's easier for your own belief to skew results on the negative side than the positive).

There's a psychological condition known as "depressive realism" which seems relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism , http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr05/realism.aspx , http://www.slate.com/id/2129377

This is a seriously great article.

One thing bothers me, though. This description of what a leader is, doesn't it fit Kurtz exactly? I can't help feeling that this is only part of the story; that we need something more than leadership alone.

It is called ethics. To paraphrase Emmanuel Levinas, the essential ethical experience is the face to face encounter with the Other. It is how one re-acts at that moment of connection, with something wholly unknown to them that is the most basic of ethical moments. One has an essential responsibility to the Other (and of course the Other has a responsibility to the individual). A responsibility born at that moment of tension. To deny and reject the Other is to reject responsibility for one's own actions. Only when a responsibility for Other is shouldered has one shouldered the responsibility for one's actions.

We need leaders who take responsibility for their actions, and for the actions of their organizations. How can they do that if they do not take responsibility for the Other, the other nation, the other company, the criminal, the competitor, the enemy? Only if a leader takes this responsibility can he truly independent.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

Don't forget to check this other article : http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-el... Great too.

lkmg: What in the characterization of leadership here sounds like clinical depression? I really didn't pick that up. However, one can point to leaders, among them military leaders, who showed what now perhaps would be diagnosed as bouts of depression--Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Marlborough come to mind.

Wasn't this posted before?

Solitude and isolation. Dwelling on problems for long periods of time. Not being satisfied with life as usual. Preferring to think before (or instead of) acting. Taking a long time to complete a seemingly simple task, because you can see the full ramifications of the task and how difficult it really is. Concern with the abstract and the illusionary/visionary instead of the immediate. Some of the attitude towards focus and concentration, although that varies.

In short, I think that depression can be somewhat characterized as a sensitivity to, or inability to filter out, certain perceptions, especially abstract concerns. What the author is advocating seems to be a conscious effort to seek those perceptions. My opinions are, of course, biased by my own experiences.

As someone who's experienced depression, I still don't see the connection between depression and any of the things you listed.

I do. However, I think it may be superficial. I do not think depressed people are overall as successful as the true leaders are, common sense says they may be less successful than the general population.

Maybe I'm more broken and depressed than I thought, since the isolation, solitude, dissatisfaction, thoughtfulness, and so forth all remain with me even when I'm not feeling down.

Just out of curiosity, what culture are you living in or where did you grow up? The definition of depression varies from culture to culture and I'm interested in understanding how your cultural background is influencing your perception.

Good message, good content, but that was some dry presentation.

I suppose the problem with every graduation speech is that it's some knowledgeable wise person up there talking essentially down to a bunch of life newbies down here. That is so rarely going to be interesting.

--snip--

Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back.