<p>Any comment, feedback and grade are welcomed. I tried to write it in 18 minutes, so there might be some silly mistakes.</p>
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<p>Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.<br>
A colleague of the great scientist James Watson remarked that Watson was always lounging around, arguing about problems instead of doing experiments. He concluded that There is more than one way of doing good science. It was Watsons form of idleness, the scientist went on to say, that allowed him to solve the greatest of all biological problems: the discovery of the structure of DNA. It is a point worth remembering in a society overly concerned with efficiency.<br>
Adapted from John C. Polanyi, Understanding Discovery </p>
<h2>Assignment: Do people accomplish more when they are allowed to do things in their own way? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations. </h2>
<p>I strongly believe that people can achieve more by doing things in their own way. There are many examples in real life and art that prove it.
When they were still working on their PhD degrees at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders, believed that they could download the whole Internet to their computers in three months. Their dreams were insane, but it led to a very important idea: To rearrange the Internet so that information can be found quickly. Before that, Yahoo, a giant in searching, had solved the problem by hiring a handful of men to index all websites in the Internet. Google's new approach not only saves people a lot of time, but also makes its founders youngest billionaires in the world. If Larry Page and Sergey Brin had done their works in a conventional way and refuse to dream unrealistic dreams, our world would have been very different today.
Another great man of IT industrial, Steve Jobs, also treat himself in is unique way. When he was at the college, all he cared about are karma and the rules of the universe. According to his autobiography, he spent two years in India to learn about Buddhism to purify his soul. Back to America, he used drug to give him inspiration. In the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", his trance is described as a colorful world where everything moves according to his will in the sound of classical music. As a founder of Pixar, his imagination surely has contributed to the surreal, yet freaking attractive worlds that bring him a huge amount of money and reputation.
Socrates also had his unique way to teach his students. When a student came to him and told him if he wanted to hear some bad words people talking about him, he simply asked: "Is the information trust worthy" and "Is he going to have some benefit listening to them". Then he concluded that he should not care about the information at all. By shutting down many unnecessary doors to the outside world, he was able to save his energy to venture in the unbounded world of theories and possibilities, making him one of the greatest ancient philosophers.
Indeed, when people dare to follow their own ways, they can become what they want to be, not what people want them to be. Thus, they have the passion and energy to focus on their work and accomplish more.</p>