<p>And so says the headline of a recent Time Magazine article that outlines why/how some people just have more drive than others, and as a result, are more likely to succeed. A little while ago, I started a (pretty controversial) thread on why I think that a high school GPA doesn't really say much about your passion and dedication (or atleast that was my case.) I think this article will make for an interesting extension to that discussion. So discuss away!</p>
<p>durran, i think your application of scientific determination to the college process is ridiculous. absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous like intelligent design. But that's a different story.</p>
<p>well, that is one argument that the article entertains. are you meant to be better than others genetically? i think the genetic thing is hogwash. bill clinton+john edwards were pretty successful. I think it all comes down to the individual and what they make of their situation. relating this back to college, someone who goes to harvard has an equal share in the pot to the hardworking kid who starts off at community college, transfers to state school and takes advantage of the resources given to him.</p>
<p>I didn't read the article, but these are my thoughts on ambition. There are certain types of people that have hypomanic personalities (borderline Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Now we could argue all day whether or not these people with hypomanic tendencies got this way because they were genetically predisposed towards it, or it was a learned trait from some other avenue (gets into the whole nature vs. nuture issue). Someone who has the trait is prone to work excessively hard at achieving their goals. Since we are talking about college admissions I'll relate an andectode I read in an article about this same cultural phenomonen. </p>
<p>A relatively bad kid was expelled from his local high school. Hoping to resturucture him his parents enrolled him in an alternative learning environment where there were no grades. Obviously the kid slacked off alot and when time came around for him to take the SAT he got like a 1100 or something. At that point his hypomanic personality emerged and he spent a better part of a year going over vocabulary, grammar, math, and all that other stuff you have to know for the SAT (I wouldn't know I'm an ACT person myself). Needless to say when he took the SAT again he made a near perfect score. With no grades, all that mattered was his test scores. He was waitlisted at Harvard and got into Princeton. I believe he is now an academic MD at Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>Alot of the people on CC can relate to this. They found their academic passion and pursued it with above average dilligence. Most people, contrary to CC thought, take the SAT, and whatever score they get is what they get. They don't prepare for it, they just take it. There is something else within a person though that makes them prep for a year to take one test. You can call it just plain "hard work", but I tend to think it's something more ingrained in our biology. I know personally that I am a little compulsive when it comes to my academics. It's not just the thought of doing well, it's the ideal of perfection that I strive for. I don't think that even if I wanted to be lazy and coast through school that I could. There is drive within me, and many CCers, that we cannot always conciously control. I contend that this trait that alot of us have is really ingrained in our brains structure and function. Wow... I'm really digressing... I've got to go do an AP Pscyh write-up...</p>
<p>Actually, i've been thinking about predetermination lately. I'm starting to believe more and more, in a weird sort of way.</p>
<p>Let's say you were in a Groundhog Day style scenario. Only, with a catch...you didn't have any of the days memories when you woke up. Everytime you woke up, your memory of the day would be erased - every morning would feel like the first Groundhog Day you experianced that year.</p>
<p>I don't think you would ever do anything different that day. If you woke up with the same memories, in the exact same condition, with the EXACT same outside stimuli (the other people)...you would do EXACTLY the same thing. Therefore, there is only ONE thing any person would do in any given scenario with the information they recieved. And, if they repeated the choice over and over (par groundhog day), they would continue making the same choice again and again.</p>
<p>Our destinies aren't exactly planned out for us, but the route we end up taking is the route you'd always take, with the same variables.</p>
<p>Our destinies aren't exactly planned out for us, but the route we end up taking is the route you'd always take, with the same variables.</p>
<p>How do we know that it wasn't predestined that immajap88 posted this thread to that link, that you replied to this thread and that I replied to what you said*?</p>
<p>ew we're getting to philosophical</p>
<p>You probably won't want to read anything more I have to say later if I reply later (but that's already predetermined whether I will reply or not*)!</p>
<p>It's not predetermined, it's just that whatever choice you end up making is the choice that you would have made every single time the same scenario is repeated.</p>
<p>The problem with trying to figure predeterminism is that it's just one big cycle: How do you know that it wasn't already predetermined for you to say that? And that question can just be asked over and over and you just get sick of it and give up. :)</p>
<p>Spartan Pho3nix, that's how similar to how I tend to think of it. If someone, let's just call him God, clones two universes (made them identical down to the properties of the smallest particle) and watches them side by side, the two universes would develop absolutely the same as time goes on... At least that's what logic and intiution tells me.</p>
<p>we all know that many of the things we do are influenced by external factors, many of which are not human at all, and very random. assuming there's a 50% chance that situation A occurs on a certain day, only have of the groundhog days would involve situation A. Thus, the days would not be repeated over and over again.</p>
<p>okay this is rather general but is the gist of my argument that i do not have time to elaborate fully on.</p>