Sun Rise

“Yesterday, I saw the sun rise and the sun set from the same chair.”

As the risk of missing the point, I replied, “Must be quite a chair.”

“Yeah well, everybody studies hard,” Chad went on. “It’s not competitive necessarily. It’s just that the tests are fairly thorough.”

“Thorough,” I thought. “So that’s what they’re calling it nowadays.”

One of my old students was giving me a tour of his medical school. It seemed like a nice facility–lots of glass and light, a microwave and a Ping-Pong table in the student lounge. Not a lot of time for contemplation, I figured. “What’s with the round tables in the classroom?” I asked.

“The seating is supposed to foster collaborative learning,” he said. “Just the same, I’m not the only one who studies all the time.”

I had always liked Chad. I had known his family for generations. He and I had worked together on an undergraduate placement and kept in touch. In high school Chad was genuinely intellectually curious, going beyond the curriculum, learning for the sake of learning. He was one of the few students who had allowed me to recommend a book and one of even fewer who had followed through and read what I suggested. If I hadn’t already made this point, I would also mention that he understood and was insightful about what he read.

He went on: “I study from seven in the morning until seven at night. Every day. It’s not bad though. There’s a cafeteria just for the students in the program and the food is great.”

Many of my students don’t have the motivation or the ability to study for 12 consecutive minutes never mind 12 hours without a break. I was impressed. Maybe I should not have been surprised. Chad had gotten almost all As as an undergrad at Amherst and had scored in the 90^th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test–only Jeopardy champions have a broader knowledge base. “Have you been pleased with your results?” I asked.

	Robert Oppenheimer

Chad was thoughtful. “It’s not clear how well I’m doing in comparison to my classmates,” he began. “Again, the emphasis is supposed to be on cooperation rather than competition. They don’t tell us what everybody else got. I did well on genetics, histology, and embryology. Biochem was tough.”

Richard Feynman

Chad asked me if I wanted to see the cadavers. I declined. Having already seen the Ping Pong table, I felt no need to check out every last room in the building. Even the most thorough touring educational consultant has to draw the line somewhere.

Chad stopped walking and pointing. I felt he might be about to say something important. Without preamble he said, “I wish I was smarter though.”

Reaching deep into my bag of tricks acquired after 30-something years of counseling, I tries to keep the incredulity out of my voice. “You wish you were smarter?” I repeated.

“Yeah, I wish I were smarter. I don’t mind studying 12 and 14 hours a day. I just wish the material came easier. Sometimes I have to read something three times before I understand it and three more times before I can memorize it for the exam.”

Enrico Fermi

So there it is. A kid at an Ivy League medical school–a stone cold brilliant young man taking courses I can’t even pronounce–who wishes he was smarter.

His dissatisfaction with his ability got me thinking. In any room–in EVERY room– somebody is the smartest kid in the room and somebody else isn’t.

	John von Neumann

I don’t know that Robert Oppenheimer, James Chadwick, Enrico Fermi, John von Neumann, and Richard Feynman were ever in the same room. They all contributed to the Manhattan Project (along with 130,000 other folks) so I suppose it’s possible they gathered around a Ping Pong table in Los Alamos at some point. If they had focused on who was smarter rather than on smushing plutonium, history might have been significantly different. But the fact remains, SOMEBODY in that room would have been the dumbest. After all, only three of the five of them even received a Nobel Prize in physics. And Von Neumann was likely the only one who could multiply eight-digit numbers together in his head. (Seriously. When he was six years old.)

And Chadwick discovered the neutron. Which, you have to admit is something of a big deal because here it is already after ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning and I myself have not discovered even one subatomic particle never mind the neutron which, I hope we can all agree, is one of the best of the bunch.

But the point is, I imagine the five of these guys sitting around chatting about stuff which, until that minute, no one on the planet had ever thought of before. They’re trying to build a bomb out of stuff nobody can even see and every last one of them is thinking, “I wish I was smarter.”

You figure Chadwick is bummed? “Sure, I discovered the neutron, but Johnny could converse in Ancient Greek when he was in second grade.” You think Von Neumann is disheartened? “Yeah, I can multiply eight-digit numbers together in my head, but Rico got the Nobel Prize in physics in ’38. Damn.”

So if nobody is ever content, if nobody is ever “smart enough,” why are you always telling your kid how smart she is?

Because there is some room somewhere where she ain’t.

Are you telling her how smart she is to encourage her? Or are you just letting your anxiety horse out of the anxiety barn? Because your wanting her to be smart and her actually being smart–to continue with the livestock metaphor–are horses of a different color.

Here’s my thought: Tell your kid how smart she is every February or so. Then take her for a walk in the woods, help her make some brownies, or plant a vegetable garden.

The rest of the year, go ahead and leave her alone. If she is as smart as you hope she is, that information will become available through some other venue. Perhaps one of her teachers will reflect on the issue. If you must praise your kid, focus on her motivation, “Looks like you worked hard,” rather than her ability. “Of course you got an A, you’re so smart” doesn’t leave much room for enjoyment.

By not telling your kid how smart she is you will communicate: that you like her just the way she is; that her enthusiasm matters more than her ability; that a balance between studying biochemistry in medical school and playing Ping Pong is a step on the path to a contented life.

And that wasting psychic energy on wishing she were smarter does not help her discover the neutron.