What’s so significant about having a place to stand?

Sun, 9 Jan 2011
2 min read
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This is a question from Formspring that deserves a blog post to itself, much like the one about the point of learning literature.

For context, I often use the line “All I need is a place to stand” in the About Me portions of my social networking pages.

The question of “What’s so significant about having a place to stand?” comes from a student who wants to know why I place so much importance on the above-mentioned phrase.

Before I explain, though, I’d like all of you to read the following pages before coming back here:

Now, Archimedes was a mathematician who is believed to have said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth”.

This is with reference to the law of the lever, where one can use a small effort to move a great load, so long as the distance between the effort and the fulcrum is sufficiently longer than that between the load and the fulcrum.

However, we can also interpret “move” as a metaphor to mean ‘affect in an inspirational manner’ – something which Archimedes’s findings have done for the world.

Therefore, I am leveraging on (pun intended) Archimedes’s metaphor to explain my own ambitions in life; ideally, I’d like to do what Archimedes has done and change the world with a small idea one day.

Before I can do that, however, I need to find a niche or an area in which I can make a difference. Once I find this niche/area, I know I’ll be good to go.

Hence, “[a]ll I need is a place to stand”.

TL;DR: Don’t be a lazy shit – just read the damn post.

Everything is text.

Mon, 10 May 2010
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Everything is text.

So I’m filing medical certificates and letters from parents, and I come across a document which a student passed to me some time back as proof of her/his absence from school.

This document is an important one; it marks a point in the life of someone the student knew.

I hold the document up to the light, to differentiate between fine print and photocopied smudges.

I read the document, and then I read the document again.

I do some calculations, then it hits me: said student’s life story is contained within the digits that have been inked on the document.

I wonder what the limits of professionalism will allow me to ask said student.

I remember that it is not within the limits of the job to wonder.

The document returns home, slipping into its plastic folder like a late night out at the clubs.

The folder, like its compatriots, is crinkled. Each bears its owner’s name, scribbled with a marker on a white sticker, pasted on the top right-hand corner of each clear sheet.

I carry on sorting the stack of papers that sit on my desk, sheaf after sheaf a demonstration of  presence, of absence, slotted into its assigned vault.

The bell is going to go in a few minutes. There is marking to be done when I go home from work. There will be papers looking for lodging tomorrow.

The Effort Effect.

Tue, 27 Apr 2010
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Who said 'can't'? Someone else is doing something someone else said was impossible. Try trying.

According to a Stanford psychologist, you’ll reach new heights if you learn to embrace the occasional tumble.

(via)

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This was quite meaningful for me because of two portions, one of which was this:

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized … that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”

It’s helped me to realise why I took a certain something too seriously – I had been too focused on performance as opposed to learning, considering the stage I was/am at. I guess it was also, in part, due to mismanaged expectations. But better to learn this later than never.

The second thing which I found meaningful was this:

Dweck’s study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motivation. But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. “We took ordinary children and made them into liars,” Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who’d been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

Am going to start saying ‘good effort’ instead of just ‘good’ from now on!