Notes From My Journal

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“We’re all the heroes of our own stories.” – George R.R. Martin

I’ve mentioned before (January 25) that I’m doing this StoryWorth thing – writing anecdotes about my life to include in a family-tree book I’ve been working on for years.

I like the service, because you get a prompt once a week on a different topic. If the prompt doesn’t inspire you, you can write something else.

Here’s a recent piece I sent in. (It has a moral. I’m sure you can figure it out for yourself.)

 

A Lesson I Learned in High School 

One of the most important lessons I learned in high school was taught to me by Mr. Ringwald, my Spanish 101 teacher.

The first day of class, calling the roll, he came to my name and asked me to stand up.

“I’ve heard about you,” he said.

I made some wiseass crack. The class laughed. (My reward.)

“I guess what I heard was true.”

I shrugged. He went on with the roll call. I sat down.

He stopped speaking and scowled at me.

“Did I ask you to sit down?”

“Duh. No.”

“Well then stand up, please.”

I did. The class laughed. I smirked, pretending I was still in charge.

He noticed the smirk.

“And while you are at it, put your hands on your head. I want to be sure that I know where they are at all times.”

The class laughed. I reluctantly complied.

He finished the roll call. Then he asked the class to open their textbooks.

I sat down and opened my book.

“Did I ask you to sit down, Mr. Ford?”

“Duh. No.”

“Well then, resume your position.”

More laughter. Reluctant compliance.

I stood there like that, feeling like an idiot with my hands on my head, until the end of the class.

At the bell, as I was leaving, Mr. Ringwald stopped me to say, “By the way, Mr. Ford… you can rest assured that I will let you know, sometime in the future, when you can sit down again like a civilized young student.”

He meant it.

For the next three or four weeks, I spent every class standing in that humiliating position.

And then one day, sensing my breaking was completed, he allowed me to sit. I never made another crack in his class. And I even learned a little Spanish.

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Worth Considering

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Business Lessons From an MIT Mathematician

Gian-Carlo Rota was mathematician, teacher, and philosopher who spent most of his career at MIT, teaching functional analysis, probability theory, phenomenology, and combinatorics. He was the only person ever to be appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics and Philosophy.

He was respected by his peers and loved by his students. Late in his career, he wrote a series of lectures and essays about what he’d learned over the years, lessons that I found in reading them to apply not just to teaching but to business and almost every realm of endeavor.

Some examples:

Dr. Rota: “The most brilliant students will invariably work out all the problems and let other students copy, and I pretend to be annoyed when I learn that this has happened. But I know that by making the effort to understand the solution of a truly difficult problem discovered by one of their peers, students learn more than they would by working out some less demanding exercise.”

The business lesson: 80% of the best work ideas will come from 20% of your employees.

 

Dr. Rota: “Half a century ago, the philosopher Gilbert Ryle discussed the difference between knowing-how courses [mathematics, the exact sciences, engineering, foreign languages, playing a musical instrument, sports] and knowing-what courses [history, the arts, the humanities, social sciences]. At MIT, knowing-how classes are more highly regarded…. And yet knowing-what courses are often more memorable. A serious study of the history of the United States Constitution or King Lear may well leave a stronger imprint on a student’s character than a course in thermodynamics….

“It is a fact, confirmed by the history of science since Galileo and Newton, that the more theoretical and removed from immediate applications a scientific topic appears to be, the more likely it is to eventually find the most striking practical applications.”

The business lesson: When hiring, give preference to those with a good theoretical knowledge of how your industry works rather than those with good pragmatic knowledge of how to do a particular job.

 

Dr. Rota: “Many freshmen students enter MIT as naïfs and leave, after four vigorous years of education, just as naïve….

“More than a few MIT graduates are shocked by their first contact with the professional world after graduation. There is a wide gap between the realities of business, medicine, law, or applied engineering, for example, and the universe of scientific objectivity and theoretical constructs that is MIT.”

The business lesson: Be careful about hiring directly from the “ivory tower.”

 

Dr. Rota: “You don’t have to be a genius to do creative work. The idea of genius elaborated during the Romantic Age [late 18th and 19th centuries] has done harm to education. It is demoralizing to give a young person role models of Beethoven, Einstein, and Feynman, presented as saintly figures who moved from insight to insight without a misstep….

“The drive for excellence and achievement that one finds everywhere at MIT has the democratic effect of placing teachers and students on the same level, where competence is appreciated irrespective of its provenance. Students learn that some of the best ideas arise in groups of scientists and engineers working together, and the source of these ideas can seldom be pinned on specific individuals.”

The business lesson: Genius matters, but not as much as common sense, ambition, and persistence.

 

Dr. Rota: “Some students arrive at MIT with a career plan. Many don’t, but it actually doesn’t matter very much either way. Some of the foremost computer scientists of our day received their doctorates in mathematical logic, a branch of mathematics that was once considered farthest removed from applications but that turned out instead to be the key to the development of present-day software.

“The skills the market demands, both in research and industry, are subject to capricious shifts. New professions will be created, and old professions will become obsolete within the span of a few years. Therefore, the best curriculum to follow is one that focuses less on current occupational skills than on those fundamental areas of science and engineering that are least likely to be affected by technological changes.”

The business lesson: Don’t feel compelled to follow a particular career plan. Stay flexible. Allow your career to find you.
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