<story><title>Rich, Black, Flunking</title><url>http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/PrintFriendly?oid=285317</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dpatru</author><text>Reminds me of a passage from Philip Greenspun&apos;s article, How to Become as Rich as Bill Gates, &lt;a href=&quot;http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;p&gt;When I arrived at MIT as a first-year graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, I asked a professor for help with a research problem. He said &quot;The reason that you&apos;ve having trouble is that you don&apos;t know anything and you&apos;re not working very hard.&quot; A friend of mine was a surgery resident at Johns Hopkins. He complained to one of his teachers that he was having trouble concentrating because he&apos;d been up all night for several nights in a row. The professor replied &quot;Oh... does your pussy hurt?&quot; According to Business Week, Jack Welch &quot;encouraged near-brutal candor in the meetings he held [at GE]&quot;.&lt;p&gt;The bottom line: self-esteem is great but beware of creating a cozy home for unproductive people with bad ideas.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>n8agrin</author><text>Perhaps this is a tangent, but the notion of &lt;i&gt;...creating a cozy home for unproductive people...&lt;/i&gt; resonated with something I learned from a kiteboard instructor, of all people:&lt;p&gt;When I was learning to kiteboard I was out one day for a couple hours, had a good session and decided I was ready to get out of the water.  I wasn&apos;t exhausted, but I was getting tired.&lt;p&gt;My instructor came speeding up next to me and asked me what I was doing. I explained I was getting tired and wanted to head in. He tossed his really nice new kiteboard my way, told me to give him the old beat up kiteboard I was riding and to go back out. I was reluctant but he pushed me and I caved in. My session went from good to great, and I think my kiteboarding skills improved more in that extra hour than in many of the days prior.&lt;p&gt;Later that night I was telling my instructor how well I did on the newer board and how I had been ready to give up for the day.  He told me &quot;Sometimes you just have to push yourself that extra 5%, even when you think you can&apos;t.&quot; That statement has been a guiding principle throughout my life ever since.&lt;p&gt;Any time I feel like I&apos;m in too much in my comfort zone, not challenging myself to learn new things, or feel I&apos;m incapable of doing something, I remember my kiteboarder&apos;s adage and try to push myself just a little bit more. So far it seems to have worked well.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rich, Black, Flunking</title><url>http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/PrintFriendly?oid=285317</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dpatru</author><text>Reminds me of a passage from Philip Greenspun&apos;s article, How to Become as Rich as Bill Gates, &lt;a href=&quot;http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;p&gt;When I arrived at MIT as a first-year graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, I asked a professor for help with a research problem. He said &quot;The reason that you&apos;ve having trouble is that you don&apos;t know anything and you&apos;re not working very hard.&quot; A friend of mine was a surgery resident at Johns Hopkins. He complained to one of his teachers that he was having trouble concentrating because he&apos;d been up all night for several nights in a row. The professor replied &quot;Oh... does your pussy hurt?&quot; According to Business Week, Jack Welch &quot;encouraged near-brutal candor in the meetings he held [at GE]&quot;.&lt;p&gt;The bottom line: self-esteem is great but beware of creating a cozy home for unproductive people with bad ideas.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gruseom</author><text>I don&apos;t think your two stories are the same thing. The MIT professor was being blunt, but not rude, and providing helpful advice (if not in a pleasant form). The medical professor was being rude to the point of abuse, and was not being helpful so much as an enforcer of the insane culture of medical training that causes residents to have to stay up for several nights in a row in the first place. (IIRC, sleep deprivation has been shown to lead to increased medical errors.)</text></comment>