Students have lots of questions at the end of the semester and most of them have to do with getting jobs. They ask about career paths and balancing work and life. But until the end of last semester no student had ever asked what it took to become great.
What an an excellent newsletter - I loved the student’s question and then the reflections of your colleagues and peers. I think this article raises so many interesting questions about greatness v success, which is that weird cross over that is hard to pry apart. Do you have to be successful to be great or great to be successful?
I also think this brings up those healthy discussions of what greatness means in the context of is greatness something that can be self-determined or does it have to be recognized by someone else in order to be “great”? For instance in order to be a truly great skier do you have to be recognized at the Olympics as an Olympic gold medalist skier or as a world champion winning skier? Or if skiing was something that brought you immense joy and personal value and so you skied everyday you could in the winter and attended local ski meets and started a local ski club for friends and others to try skiing, would that make you a great skier?
Aside from my intense ski metaphor (I don’t even ski 😂) , I like that there is such a variety in the answers to this question and that it’s clear people are thinking on it and wondering what about greatness is either alluring or a goal or who gets to define what it is. Loved it!
What an an excellent newsletter - I loved the student’s question and then the reflections of your colleagues and peers. I think this article raises so many interesting questions about greatness v success, which is that weird cross over that is hard to pry apart. Do you have to be successful to be great or great to be successful?
I also think this brings up those healthy discussions of what greatness means in the context of is greatness something that can be self-determined or does it have to be recognized by someone else in order to be “great”? For instance in order to be a truly great skier do you have to be recognized at the Olympics as an Olympic gold medalist skier or as a world champion winning skier? Or if skiing was something that brought you immense joy and personal value and so you skied everyday you could in the winter and attended local ski meets and started a local ski club for friends and others to try skiing, would that make you a great skier?
Aside from my intense ski metaphor (I don’t even ski 😂) , I like that there is such a variety in the answers to this question and that it’s clear people are thinking on it and wondering what about greatness is either alluring or a goal or who gets to define what it is. Loved it!