Simone

Simone

**SUMMARIZE**
This role will be completed with each entry and should be posted on your personal page. Your job is to prepare a brief summary of the day's reading. The summary should be a quick statement that conveys the main highlights, key points, essence of the day's reading assignment. This should be a short paragraph. This is also where you will highlight thoughts regarding connections between the reading and the essential question for your book.

The introduction and first chapter have been very informative so far. Gladwell discusses the different instances around the world and his ideas of success. For example, he mentions the relevance hockey players have to their birth month are the best hockey players because they are the oldest on the teams. He stressed this concept that people born at a certain time have more time to mature and grow up, therefore they do well. Gladwell then explains the elements of success and how that relates to the opportunities people are offered, that the more opportunities you have, the more successful you will be. It is also mentioned that the talent of certain people on the Czech athletic team has been "squandered". The statistics revolve around those born in the first quarter of the year with the success.
 * May 3**

In the next section of reading, Gladwell's main concept revolves around the actual practice it takes to be very, very good at something, to the point of success. The examples he used had high IQ's, which seemed to factor into success and the lifestyle of a particular person seemed to have a huge impact on how successful they might have been, but he mentioned that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to master something. Gladwell used examples of Bill Joy, computer genius, Bill Gates, and The Beatles. Gladwell brought up the lifestyles of these people: Bill Joy went to a high school with a computer class. If he had not done so, he might have never gotten into computer technology. This is an example relating to the essential question, showing that the circumstances have a huge impact on an individual, although Bill Joy was a very intelligent individual and a classified "nerd", his opportunities allowed him to be the computer genius he became.
 * May 6**

Chapter four discussed the relation of social class and success. This section directly related to the essential question by using two examples of Chris Langan and Robert Oppenheimer, Langan, who was very poor, and Oppenheimer who was very wealthy were both very intelligent boys. Most interestingly, the lives they ended up with weren't exactly a reflection of their intelligence. The circumstances that Langan grew up in actually hindered his ability to reach success they way he could have. Because his mother did not sign the financial form allowing him to continue with his scholarship at Reed, his whole life changed. At that point in Langan's life, he had both the circumstances and the qualities of a gifted individual that would have led him to success, however he lost it all. This is an example that in order to be successful, it's not necessarily enough to just be smart. The difference in culture was also a factor into Langan's life. Oppenheimer was used as an example that he group up with wealth, a defined culture and a successful family. Oppenheimer was brought up through a very prestigious school while Langan was smart and went through normal schooling and that made listening and interacting with his professors difficult because he was not used to the behavior in his particular culture, thus teachers would not think he was anything special. This chapter concluded with the fact that people in the lower class must work from the bottom up because people like Langan had to make it on their own, without any guidance, which people like Oppenheimer had all of their life.
 * May 10**

Chapter five begins with the story of Joe Flom, a partner of a huge law firm in New York. It discusses his background and how his parents were Jewish immigrants who worked in the garment industry. The direct relations to the essential question begin here, because the circumstances Flom was in (went to a successful school in Manhattan, did two years at City School in New York, and applied to Harvard, and was put on the Law Review) were very good. The success of Flom was/is thriving as his law firm Skadden, Arps has nearly two-thousand attorneys with twenty-three offices with $1 billion dollar earnings. The book specifically points out "Successful people don't do it alone. Where they come from matters." It then relates the stories of Bill Joy and Chris Langan and how intelligence, personality and ambition plays into to a person's success. The three lessons are: The importance of being Jewish, Demographic Luck and The Garment Industry and Meaningful Work. Flom was compelled by his religion to work hard, but because of the Depression, it was not a time he was able to work. He had been lucky, in the sense that his parents had granted him with opportunities for success.
 * May 13**

Chapters six to eight were a change of pace for the next section of the book, entitled "Legacy". The main themes throughout revolved around social and behavioral patterns in people. Chapter 6 talked about "culture of honor" and examined how people in different geographical locations acted towards one another in reference to violence. On page 166 it states, " When one family fights with another, it's a feud. When lots of families fight with one another in identical little towns up and down the same mountain range, it's a pattern". Most intriguingly, the pattern relies on where a family is located, because these patters of cultures of honor tend to be in "highlands and other marginally fertile areas", because the general goal is good farming land, therefore in the North, where it was experimented how people acted toward one another, was different because no farming was involved. This example is an abstract example of how circumstances have a significant impact on the individual. Had these people not been born in the Appalachian mountains and raised on farms, they might have not started this pattern of fighting and violence among one another. Chapter seven is the most shocking chapter yet. "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" gives the reader a quizzical notion, but it is soon revealed how "ethnicity" and "plane crashes" relate. The surprising revelations behind the plane crashes discussed (Guam crash, Potomac River crash, Colombia to JFK airport crash) revolved around human error. Not only was it human error, but it derived from the ethnicity of the captains. Klotz, the first officer of the plane going to JFK simply did not speak up. Unfortunate as that was, in his culture, it is rude to be assertive in a way that "challenges authority" even if that means the captain is making mistakes. This is a prime example of an equilibrium between how circumstances affected the individual, and the individual then creating history. It was all cause and effect, and not one could do with out the other, which is beginning to show as a constant theme throughout this book that circumstances and the individual together make history happen.
 * May 18**

"Rice Paddies and Math Tests" was the very appropriate title of chapter eight, a section focused on geographical regions of China in relation to labor for rice and the high math intelligence in China.Gladwell discusses how race relates to success, therefore having done research of all aspects of humanity to prove his point. **
 * May 21