NOTE: This is probably the most controversial article on the blog. I myself learned a lot from the discussion in the comments that followed, and I am willing to admit my current thoughts on this subject are quite different from when I initially wrote this. However, I think there is great educational value in keeping this article and the comments up. That being said, I would appreciate it if people read all the comments and my responses before making judgments about my perspective on the issue, as I think my initial article doesn’t explain my point of view all that well, and can lead to misinterpretations of my thoughts.

During elementary and high school, I felt as if numerous sources in society were encouraging the concept of “nobility” as the greatest thing in the world. Things like school and the media were constantly championing ideas like volunteerism, servant leadership, environmentalism, etc. to the point where it was suggested that being a “good, noble” person involved thinking and acting with those ideas in mind.

And while I myself was swept up by those ideas, especially during high school, I began noticing some problems when I entered university. I started realizing that issues aren’t as simple as we often make them to be. For instance, bring up a random high school discussion on the environment, and you often hear things like “yah, coal plants are bad! We should get rid of all of them and power our cities completely with solar energy” followed by nods of agreement. But then if you do a bit more research, you start to learn that solar panels are currently pretty expensive as well as take up a ridiculous amount of space, such that it may just not be feasible.

It seems that the more you know, and the more open you are to possibilities, the more complex the world becomes.

The concept of nobility is particularly prevalent with “premeds” and their interest in medicine. A lot of students seem taken by the idea that it’s good to be pursuing medicine for the “right reasons” – usually this refers to pursuing medicine for the sake of practicing medicine, often driven by the desire to heal others, improve lives, or an interest in a specific field of medicine. Conversely, these same students usually see it as sort of taboo to be pursuing medicine for the money or prestige.

Personally, while I am generally interested in people’s motivations for what they do, I don’t think it is right to judge a medical school applicant solely on their intentions. I think it’s wrong, and kind of illogical, to immediately associate noble intentions with good and not-so-noble intentions with bad, in terms of being a physician.

The Patient’s Perspective

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I have always done well in school my whole life. Throughout both elementary and high school, I had rarely gotten close to a failing grade in anything. And even the few times I did, the weight of those assignments or tests was not that significant, and as you eventually learn, high school marks don’t matter that much once you reach a certain point.

When I got to university, I had planned on taking school a bit more seriously. Unlike high school where you have numerous tests, assignments and exams per course (and thus, failing a single test probably does not affect your final mark too much), university courses tend to be composed of fewer components that are worth more. As a result, messing up even one test could now significantly hurt your final mark. For example, the microeconomics course I took last year had two tests (25% each) and one final exam (50%). The final exam itself had just 40 multiple choice questions, meaning that each question was worth 1.25% of my final mark!

However, the bigger reason why I wanted to take my university academics more seriously is because I was interested in eventually applying to medical school. While medical schools differ on how much they value GPA, the fact of the matter is that given the competitive nature of the process, it makes sense to do your best. You will never know when that extra point might just be the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.

Nonetheless, the reality is that university is more difficult than high school. And while I wasn’t expecting it, I did hit a rough patch during the fall of my first year. There was a particular week where, back to back, I got the two worst marks I have ever received in university so far – 60’s on both a physics and chemistry test. I was partly upset because of how it could affect my final marks in the course, but I think I was even more hurt because I expected to do better than that.

However, did this mean I was now a C-student in my physics and chemistry courses?

Expectation and the Long Run

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One of my biggest pet peeves is arrogance and cockiness. I just find it super annoying to talk to people who like to talk about how much better they are at something than other people or, worse, like to put down other people who are worse than them at something. And while it may very well be true that they are absolutely outstanding at something, I could really care less sometimes.

I’m not saying I’m absolutely immune to having an ego. In my defense though, I don’t really get the urge to get into ego wars except with really arrogant people. Even then I’m pretty hesitant about doing it because I don’t really want to sink to that level.

One instance that comes to mind is when I see some of my undergraduate biology peers talking about other majors, such as psychology, kinesiology, or majors in the arts. I’ve seen some of them brag about how much harder biology is, and about how much smarter they are than some students in other majors and stuff like that. I don’t really care for arguments like that because I believe that different types of intelligences dominate various fields in the first place. Being able to excel at anything is admirable, regardless of the field. In any case, I know of arts majors who I think are way more intelligent in the traditional sense than many of those same science students I’ve seen waving their egos around.

Fortunately, I don’t like to talk to people like that, so I don’t really have to hear it on a regular basis. But that doesn’t stop it from annoying me!

There’s one message board I visit sometimes catered towards students interested in medical school. It amazes, but not really surprises me, when I see that some of the medical students who post are ridiculously arrogant. I’ve noticed that while they seemed kind of obnoxious before getting into medical school, they really turned on the arrogance when they got in. I’ve seen some of them absolutely attack undergraduate students, as if the fact that they are medical students puts them in sort of magical position that allows them to call everyone else stupid. Of course, when you are on a message board where 90% of the users are dreaming to be in your position, no one dares to argue with you! I’m not denying that I sometimes see high school or undergraduate students ask some relatively obvious questions, but if that makes you mad or you get pleasure from making them feel stupid, then I think that is just really sad.

Everything is relative. There’s no question that I often get questions in tutoring or from the readers of this website that seem absolutely obvious to me – but that’s because I’m pretty experienced in those fields. If those questions weren’t obvious to me, then I would be the wrong person to ask! The reason I don’t get mad or ignore questions is because I understand that I wouldn’t wanted to be called stupid or ignored if I had a question myself. I know there are definitely topics out there where I would say or ask “dumb” things.

The reason why some of these students lack humility is often because they haven’t seen how much larger the world is, and therefore, haven’t been in many positions where they are at the “bottom rung” of the ladder. Once you experience a lot of situations where the people around you are just so much better than you at something, you start to learn some humility, and realize there is still so much to learn about everything.

I’d like to think I’m a pretty humble guy in general (or am I not humble for saying that? hmmm…). When I did really well in the scholarship process in Grade 12, I didn’t really tell anyone except my family. I don’t think anyone except my family knew about all of the scholarships I had won. I just didn’t feel comfortable talking to my friends about how well I had done when I knew that many of them could be struggling to pay off university; it just didn’t feel right.

I think the main reason for this is that through winning awards, scholarships, or competitions, I end up having to meet people who are way better than me at different things. For example, while I was probably one of the top mathematics students in my school, when I went to the Ontario Mathematics Olympics, I was not even close to being one of the best mathematics students there. Through experiences like that, I know how it feels to be on the other side when you aren’t as good at something as the people around you, and so I sure as heck don’t want to make other people feel bad about their abilities.

Furthermore, one of the problems with having too big of an ego is that it prevents you from developing and improving yourself. If you don’t believe there is more to learn, you probably won’t get better at something. One of the things I’ve noticed about the top people in many fields is that they are often quite humble, in the sense that while they realize they are good (i.e. they are still confident), they are humble enough to recognize that they aren’t perfect and there is always room for improvement.

One of the things that fascinates me is the different types of sensitivity that exist among people, and our tolerance for sensitive issues. Everyone reacts differently to issues and experiences. Some of us are more sensitive in some situations while completely indifferent in others. By sharing with you my own sort of sensitivity spectrum, I hope it encourages you to reflect on your own, as well as those of your friends and family around you. I think by understanding your own sensitivity and of those nearby, you will be able to better understand others and forge more meaningful relationships.

Emotional Sensitivity

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As you learned in the first two parts of this series on success, my first Independent Study Project (ISP) for my gifted program was on the Brain and Nervous System, and I was able to achieve success by mimicking a technique I had observed from older students. However, the following year in Grade 6, every other student started creating board games to achieve their synthesis objective. If I used the board game idea again, that aspect of my project would be no different from anyone else’s.

Mimicking Can Lead to Saturation

Essentially, what we saw from then on out for the next few years was a saturation of board games at the annual ISP show case. Instead of being something new and cool to check out, it became almost expected – in a way, it became almost standard to have one.

The problem with this type of saturation is that the value for going this route decreases. There is nothing special about a product that is being made everywhere and by everyone. In the same way, once everyone started churning out board games to achieve the synthesis objective, the impressiveness of a board game I produced would decrease relative to its value the year before – when I was the only student who made one in my class.

We can see this type of situation developing all the time. Take any great product that’s the first of its kind in the market. Demand will be super high and supply will be low because only one company is making it – as a result, the value of the product is high. Conversely, once competitors enter the market with similar products, the value of each of these products decreases because the supply has increased. Eventually, the market becomes saturated with similar products.

In Grade 6, I decided to do my project on Flying Machines – essentially looking at the development of aircrafts through history and how they functioned. But once I realized that the ISP showcase would be saturated with board games, I decided to completely avoid that route and look for a new cool idea.

PowerPoint

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To better explain what I mean by this title, let’s go back to the story in Part 1 of this series. As I was saying, the Grade 5 gifted students were not expected to achieve the higher objectives in their projects, such as synthesis. In the end, I was one of a few students who were able to achieve the synthesis objective. For my project on the Brain and Nervous System, I decided to create an original board game where the players must learn about and better understand the nervous system in order to move ahead in the game – that is, I was communicating the information and ideas I learned in a new and original fashion.

Of course, this idea was no accident. It’s not like I was sitting around one day contemplating how to achieve the synthesis objective and the idea of a board game just popped into my head. I already knew the board game would be an acceptable idea for the synthesis objective – I had seen with my own eyes that it was.

Recall those previous two years where I went to my brother’s class’s ISP showcase. I had observed their projects and the ideas they used to complete their ISP objectives. For whatever reason, many of them chose to use board games to achieve their synthesis objectives. And while the board game idea was nothing to marvel at from an older student’s point of view, for my class that was new to the whole ISP thing, it was completely unheard of.

I was able to achieve a near perfect mark on my ISP because I was successful at completing more of the objectives than most of my peers. And I was able to do so because of my ability to observe how previous students were successful and implement those same solutions for my own problem. Not surprisingly, the other students in my gifted class caught on pretty quick, and almost everyone created a board game to achieve the synthesis objective in their ISP’s the following year.

Many Solutions Are Already Out There

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At the elementary school Gifted program I attended for four years, one of the most important and time-consuming activities every year was the Independent Study Project (ISP). The ISP consisted of picking any topic of interest, and using all of the Bloom’s Taxonomy cognitive objectives as guidelines for understanding, thinking, and communicating about the topic in more depth than we would normally do so in the traditional school system. These cognitive objectives included, in order from simplest to most difficult: knowledge (e.g. facts), comprehension (e.g. understanding of ideas), application (e.g. applying known facts/ideas to solve new problems), analysis (e.g. analyzing relationships between ideas), synthesis (e.g. using known ideas to create something new), and evaluation (e.g. making judgments about ideas).

In terms of the ISP, we would be graded on how well we met each of these objectives (if at all). During your first year of doing an ISP, in Grade 5, students weren’t expected to have met the synthesis or evaluation objectives. However, it was the hope of the teachers that students would be meeting all of the objectives in their ISP’s by the end of Grade 8. In case you were wondering, my project topics from first to last were the Brain and Nervous System, Flying Machines, Genetic Engineering, and Stem Cell Research – so I guess it’s previous obvious that since early on I have been interested in science, but particularly topics dealing with ethical issues.

Admittedly, before I was even identified as gifted, I already had a bit of insider knowledge about the ISP because my brother had already been in the gifted program for two years. Not only was I aware of my brother’s projects, but I also attended the annual ISP showcase and got to see the different projects and how the students already in the program approached meeting the six objectives for the ISP. This information would prove invaluable later on when I started doing my own ISP’s.

Not Knowing How to Succeed

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I don’t claim to know the meaning of life because I don’t know whether such a thing exists, and even if it does, I don’t know how one could discover it. Every type of opinion on the meaning of life is essentially a belief – an idea that you might live your life around but not necessarily have concrete evidence to prove that it is true.

What can I say? I am a scientist by nature. I believe in logic. I like rational arguments. I like having reasons for things.

And for those reasons, I find it hard to believe that we could ever find a true meaning of life: Why are we here? What is our purpose?

To believe that there is a true meaning of life implies that this meaning must be universal and applicable to everyone – yet how could we ever find such a thing?

Fate

Some people believe in fate or destiny – the idea that everything that is going to happen was meant to be.

I don’t like to believe in fate because it implies that I really don’t have free will. It implies that I am not really making decisions because it was already pre-determined that I was going to take those actions.

If you believe in fate, how could you ever blame someone? A criminal could argue that it was fate for him to commit a crime, and since all of this was pre-determined, it’s technically not his fault. Yes it would be fair to jail him since he is a danger to society, but if you believe in fate, how could you justify blame?

If you believe that everyone on this earth was born with a set purpose, does this not suggest at least some aspect of pre-determined events? Then again, I guess you could argue that we may all have a purpose but we don’t necessarily all complete our “life mission”.

If you were to vanish right now, would your life have mattered?

I am content knowing that I will never know what the true meaning of life is, if there even is one. What I do know is that if you choose to, you can lead a meaningful life.

It seems by nature that humans are social creatures. So to me, we have the most meaning by impacting the lives of others. And in that sense, it’s hard to lead a meaningful life if you live a solitary life.

If you were all alone on an island, with no contact with other humans, how could you ever impact someone’s life? To the rest of humanity, you essentially never existed.

Thus, you can’t lead a meaningful life if you live a solitary one. That being said, at least for humanity’s sake, leading a meaningful life is not necessarily better than leading a solitary one.

Positive Impact

It’s true that many of history’s tyrants have led meaningful lives, though their actions are not things I would personally encourage. And although it would be wrong to downplay the impact of their lives on humanity, it doesn’t mean they led lives we should aspire to.

Personally, I want to live a positively meaningful life. I want to impact people in a way that makes them happy and improves their lives. If I am ever remembered for something, I would want to be remembered for doing something positive.

I think deep down everyone wants their life to matter. Not necessarily that they existed for a reason, but that their existence mattered.

And if you choose to positively impact those around you, then your life definitely matters.

When I was in Grade 4, I was identified as “gifted” by my school board. As a result of that, I started going to a separate gifted program at another school for one day a week from Grades 5 to 8. It was a great program that allowed me to explore many neat things not really provided in the regular school setting, such as creative group projects, puzzles, logic games, independent-study projects, etc.

When school boards administer these tests to identify students as gifted, it affects students emotionally and mentally. The main reason for this is because it creates labels, and subsequently, it creates an imaginary divide between students: “gifted” and “non-gifted”. A lot of people seem to associate the term gifted with intelligent, and so to some students, it’s almost as if you are saying that they are not intelligent because they are in the “non-gifted” group. Conversely, students in the gifted group are often expected to do well in school because people now assume they are “intelligent” – so anything less than academic excellence is a disappointment.

I don’t really want to go into a whole discussion of intelligence because that’s not what I want to focus this article on. What I will say is that I am personally a believer in a form of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. I believe that everyone has a distinct combination of different types of intelligence, which is why humanity has been able to produce and do so many different and amazing things.

The test that my school board used to identify gifted students largely rested on analyzing only a student’s logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic intelligences– and not surprisingly, these are the types of skills that help students do well in traditional school subjects. It’s nice that school boards help develop these particular skills for students highly gifted in those areas, but at the same time, it could also be argued that students who excel in other intelligence areas aren’t receiving equal treatment.

Unfair Expectations From Other Students

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Many people would agree that an essence of being human is our need to form meaningful relationships with others. We are born into a close knit group known as a family, consisting of very strong relationships of many types. Spouses depend on each other for love and support, and sometimes, to work collaboratively as parents in raising children. Often similar in age and growing up in the same conditions, siblings form a very strong bond and sense of understanding that they can’t share with anyone else.

When we leave the family for a second and enter the rest of the world, we form many new relationship types. Doctor and patient. Teacher and student. Coach and player. With these new relationships come new roles, experiences, and types of understanding.

One of the most important, and seemingly necessary, type of relationship between human beings is friendship. But what is the purpose of friendship and what is necessary for genuine friendships to form?

Common Interest Theory

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