Outliers Essay
Madeline Stroyls
Chirpas
CP English
8 May 2012
Teens and Success Teens today could improve upon so much to get a better chance to become more successful in life. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that a child’s performance level for anything has to do with their culture. He says that people of Asian descent will focus more and try harder when they do not understand something. He also talks about how constantly practicing can make you master a skill. If teens can use ideas that Gladwell talks about they can become more successful. One idea is teens can work on their social skills and eventually their social skills will be able to open up opportunities for them. A person could be the smartest person in the world, but if they had no social skills, it would not matter how smart they were because they would not be able to communicate their ideas. One moment that Gladwell shows a moment in which social skills matter are in the chapter “The Trouble with Geniuses”. Chris Langan gets kicked out of two colleges because he couldn’t properly communicate with the dean of students what the problem was he was facing. While he was at Reed College in Oregon his financial aid wasn’t filled out and sent to Reed, so he had gone to the office and didn’t even try to argue about it, “They simply didn’t care. They didn’t give a shit about their students” (Gladwell 93). Langan made no attempt to talk to the person in the office he just accepted the defeat and moved on. If it had been any other person they would’ve tried to get the date of which the financial aid form had to be turned in. Defeat would’ve not been accepted so quickly because majority of people have good enough social skills to do this. Langan didn’t have the social skills to even argue with the office. As smart as Langan was he really wasn’t he because he couldn’t communicate and if he couldn’t communicate how are people even going to know that he really is a genius. Literally someone could be extremely stupid
Chirpas
CP English
8 May 2012
Teens and Success Teens today could improve upon so much to get a better chance to become more successful in life. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that a child’s performance level for anything has to do with their culture. He says that people of Asian descent will focus more and try harder when they do not understand something. He also talks about how constantly practicing can make you master a skill. If teens can use ideas that Gladwell talks about they can become more successful. One idea is teens can work on their social skills and eventually their social skills will be able to open up opportunities for them. A person could be the smartest person in the world, but if they had no social skills, it would not matter how smart they were because they would not be able to communicate their ideas. One moment that Gladwell shows a moment in which social skills matter are in the chapter “The Trouble with Geniuses”. Chris Langan gets kicked out of two colleges because he couldn’t properly communicate with the dean of students what the problem was he was facing. While he was at Reed College in Oregon his financial aid wasn’t filled out and sent to Reed, so he had gone to the office and didn’t even try to argue about it, “They simply didn’t care. They didn’t give a shit about their students” (Gladwell 93). Langan made no attempt to talk to the person in the office he just accepted the defeat and moved on. If it had been any other person they would’ve tried to get the date of which the financial aid form had to be turned in. Defeat would’ve not been accepted so quickly because majority of people have good enough social skills to do this. Langan didn’t have the social skills to even argue with the office. As smart as Langan was he really wasn’t he because he couldn’t communicate and if he couldn’t communicate how are people even going to know that he really is a genius. Literally someone could be extremely stupid