exercise 5.1

FirstName LastName

Instructor 'sTitle Instructor 'sLastName

Course Title , Course Section

Month Day Year

Malcolm Gladwell

All Talent Is Not Equal

We are a society driven by success , and while many people might feign altruism by discussing the various definitions of alternate success (i .e . loving one 's job , helping humankind , having a family , when it comes right down to it , Americans measure success in very concrete measurable terms : performance , test scores , and financial success . We are a people who see in black and white : one is either a winner or

a loser one has either succeeded or one has failed . The absolute absurdity of this measure of success is at the heart of much of Malcolm Gladwell 's work

Malcolm Gladwell tackles the difference between choking and panicking in his piece The Art of Failure ' and in doing so , he points out that one must actually have a high degree of skill to choke thereby implying that to suffer this fate is to prove one 's talent - not a graceful way by any means , but a way -the-less . Even after acknowledging the logic in Gladwell 's position , it is a tough sell to convince a person that only the talented can choke . The term is clearly negative , and even in a backhanded-compliment sort of way , it hurts Gladwell tries to point out that acknowledging the failure (i .e . the choking ) without acknowledging the skill necessary to choke is a misguided , jaded way of perceiving things . This is one of Malcolm Galdwell 's central fascinations : the degree to which talent-based failure is categorized as mere failure in our society

Getting In ' is Malcolm Galdwell 's examination of the evolution of college admissions requirements specifically , those of American Ivy League schools . His perspective is rather unique in that he was raised and educated in Canada where there wasn 't a strict hierarchy of colleges (Gladwell , Getting In . He expresses being a bit flabbergasted by the hierarchy that does exist in American Ivy League colleges , and the means by which individuals are presumed successful based solely on their attending a particular university . The most fascinating point he makes occurs when he traces the old admission standards (strictly numbers based ) to those of the present (numbers and background based . Gladwell exposes the origin of the background issue as having been a means to constrain the number of Jews allowed admission . It appears that Gladwell is also fascinated by the arbitrary way in which admission into a university (a sort of club ) is determined and how that arbitrary admission results in elevated or diminished status

The Talent Myth ' focuses on the misguided notion that highly educated and trained people result in automatic corporate success Malcolm Gladwell uses Enron to showcase how false this notion is and positions the now infamous company against the likes of Southwest Airlines to prove that corporate structure , solid management , and attention to detail are the keys to success , and companies built around these notions can place average people into place...