It takes effort to build a model

Since coming to America, it’s interesting that I sense from many I’ve met that there is a perception that putting in effort, especially in school, is not very cool. I believe this to be a profoundly American thing, and I don’t know if it’s always been like this or not. My thinking is that people who are perceived to be successful by individuals in this country, which at the moment for many are the ultra wealthy businessmen and professional athletes, have achieved their success through means by which most people view as relatively effortless. This is just a hypothesis because some of the billionaires I see (i.e. Elon Musk, Jensen Huang) all extol the virtue of hard work and suffering, so maybe it’s more of a misperception. But then again, both Elon Musk and Jensen Huang are engineer-businessman and immigrants.

Take sports for instance. Most professional athletes when they compete are viewed as having a kind of effortlessness to their performance. However, we don’t really get to see or measure how much each of them practice. Some of these athletes actually don’t practice very much at all and rely on their talent alone. Others, I surmise, practice a lot more because they are not as talented. But practice in sports is neither a public thing nor is it a measurable one so all we see on TV and in the arena is the effortless performances.

However, this doesn’t necessarily translate into academics. My belief is that you need to put in the effort in school so that both you and your superiors have a somewhat accurate gauge of what it is you’re good at and what you can be matched with. Of course, I guess there are people, such as those from wealthy backgrounds, who don’t really care for being highly educated because they don’t have a need to be. It may be that they don’t have the interest and they just stumbled upon their wealth, almost in a lottery-like situation. In that case, they’re just ordinary people with money and power who are still subject to the laws of society and punishment if they transgress. School, for them, is just a place to seek companionship, to network, and to protect and manage their wealth. So at the end of day, school is just a game of who’s bluffing and who’s got the goods because people don’t exactly advertise their bank accounts publicly.