<p>Thought you all might get a kick out of this:
Gurdon</a> Institute - Professor Sir John Gurdon: the infamous report card...</p>
<p>It's a report card for the British man who recently won the Nobel Prize in medicine. (The institute where he works has posted it, which I think is hysterical).</p>
<p>Big sigh…I feel hopeful now.</p>
<p>It’s funny, and sad. What if the student and Nobel prize winner had read this and thought – gee, he’s right – I should give up science. I’m no good at it.</p>
<p>This is wonderful. Thanks for posting.</p>
<p>Then someone else would have won the Nobel Prize this year, and we’d all never know the difference.</p>
<p>Never give up on your kid. Spielberg was rejected twice by USC. Cheney flunked out of Yale and he still ended up as Vice President.</p>
<p>I wonder if Sir John Gurdon had a chance to meet up with the professor again.</p>
<p>Love it! Thanks for sharing.</p>
<p>Is the lesson that teachers in the past have been too harsh in evaluating students or that a “kick in the pants” can encourage a student to do better work? From one case there is not information to say.</p>
<p>This one is going up on my office door.</p>
<p>I love it! Thanks for posting.</p>
<p>I think the salient part of the report is the part about Gurdon insisting on doing his work in his own way. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl, You are correct that if Gurdon’s teacher had been successful at discouraging him from a life in science, we would not know the difference. But Nobel prizes are awarded for groundbreaking, influential research. He has had a major influence on progress in his field. Had he not become a scientist, there would have been a big difference, although we would not have known.</p>
<p>Of course, if a student today in the US got that poor a mark in a science course, the doors to medicine would likely be closed, since MD medical schools in the US are so selective these days.</p>
<p>“He has had a major influence on progress in his field. Had he not become a scientist, there would have been a big difference, although we would not have known.”</p>
<p>Of course - but for all we know, that’s going on right now - some person who could have done groundbreaking work isn’t working as a scientist. Maybe it’s a SAHM. Who knows?</p>
<p>…
</p>
<p>Supply and demand will soon kick the doors of the US medical schools wide open. With Concierge medicine and all its derivatives coming on the seen? The proliferation of preventative care? And the attrition of the current supply of doctors (average age of internists is 56!)</p>
<p>DW with DS '15 spent 3 hours in a waiting room of a very well equipped and upper middle class, suburban urgent care facility, Friday afternoon. That won’t be tolerated for long, and certainly if it gets worse.</p>
<p>I’d like to take away the message that one bad report doesn’t have to be the end of a career dream…</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s kind of what I took away from it – along with the message that people mature at different rates, so while one individual might be ready to do amazing things with math, for example, at age 11, somebody else might not be ready until age 16 or 18, but that ultimately what matters is the work that they do and not the age at which they were ready to do it.
(I also have a former colleague who is a Rhodes Scholar who failed kindergarten, and he’ll tell you pretty much the same thing, that he wasn’t as mature as the other five year olds in his class, but that by the time he was in his twenties he was clearly an intellectual force to be reckoned with.)</p>
<p>Hmm I wonder what this demonstrates?</p>
<p>a. the stern rebuke made him see the error of his ways and buckled down?
b. he had a unconventional mind that wasnt appreciated by a high school teacher (“he will not listen and insists on doing work his own way”).
c. the wisdom of a preference system that allows the last place at Eton a seat at Oxford. </p>
<p>Anyone know? The wikipedia article is very bad. Ironically for someone involved in cloning it doesnt mention if he had any parents, children or a spouse.</p>