Monday, November 1, 2010

What is the Theme of Your Life?

Recently I read a fabulous article:

The Disadvantage of an Ivy League Education.  It was fascinating.  Written by Professor By William Deresiewicz, an Ivy League professor, who should know.  Read it first, it is self explanatory.   Here's a short quote:

...
In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse.
...

I wondered if the ideas put forth.  Has my career been determined by the universities that I went to?  Had I gone to an elite university, would my career have been different?  Or not?

I then suddenly had the thought.  If your life were a movie, what would the theme be?  What simple theme would explain your life the best?  Think of documentaries, biographies, books, stories, movies that you have seen.   It's a fascinating question.