Self-Worth

Thousands of kids apply to the University of Pennsylvania every year fretting about scores, grades and extracurriculars. Don't worry, this isn't a sad sob story of how I didn't get in. Allow me to be cocky for a second.

I attend school with 10,000 undergrads, most of them smart, some, even brilliant.

And I've had the pleasure of working with them into the late hours of the night coding and decoding, writing proofs that seem redundant and looking over marketing reports trying to deduce what the next big step in computing will be. It's smartphone operating systems and what they will contribute to cloud computing btw.

I also attend Wharton. A school within a school is an interesting concept but not the subject matter of this discussion.

The Wharton Undergraduate division is a model toy of an MBA education. With grade non-disclosure and a strong cohort system, the Wharton MBA program affords (for a small fortune of course) some of the brightest business-minded beings in the world an opportunity to network. Sometimes they even learn a thing or two (I know. I've seen them in class with my own eyes).

Wharton undergrad is an attempt to replicate this. Your social capital is worth as much as the brains you may have or claim to have. There are brilliant people in Wharton.

I also attend the Engineering school - SEAS. We don't have a proper name so call us Penn-gineers.

An undervalued school to be sure. We have great professors, are nationally ranked in a variety of departments and world class labs. Even a building shaped and colored like a chloroplast. A little too much negative space for my taste.

In both schools the problem is not the quality of mind but the employment of the mind.

The leader of the pack here is definitely not the smartest guy or girl. It's the individual that capitalizes on his/her self-worth and uses it to his/her advantage. It's definitely not meant to be a negative thing. Capitalizing on what you know and who you know is something both business school (come to our Networking event!!) and the engineering school (CIS 112: a Networked Life) teach and preach. The leader of the pack knows that his/her best bet is to surround the persona created about him with those of equal or greater brilliance or cunning as it may apply. Think of a president's cabinet or a famous artist's army of reps/legal counsel/agents.

Gladwell would call them Linkers. So would technical management lore.

Half of the battle is knowing how to use your brain. How to best exploit your skills and areas of expertise is a lesson best learned young. It has been said before that practice is worth more than inherent talent.

Gladwell would call it the 10,000 hour journey.

Those who are personable are often times the ones that manage to make it big. Given, this usually correlates with an arbitrarily measure of high IQ but it requires being personable. Fortune 500 CEOs, Presidents and student leaders alike all have to combine these traits. It's not a choice. Without it there's nothing left but brains. The body cannot live without the brain. Without it we are reduced to being geeks or smart kids who don't know how to communicate their knowledge. Think of the Macbook air and ignore all possible negative thoughts that come from its image. It wouldn't be half the product it is if Jobs hadn't pulled it out of a paper envelope.

Things do not exist in the vacuum of our mind. A medium is key and that's what our leaders get. They might not be genius but they are genial and they know how to infuse their energy and life into those around them. That's what makes them.

It's all about self-worth. A combination of mind and soul(read people skills).