Clickbait Title: Gifted Kid Anthem (Remix)

As much as I try to fight it, I tend to strive for comparison between myself and my peers. It gives me motivation to not want to fall behind, to not only continue to understand what they are talking about but to be potentially useful (i.e. better) in at least some aspects.

On the other hand, it is very advisable to always search out new people who you can learn things from. People have sung a lot of praise about being the “stupidest person in the room”. I tended to do this (unconsciously) by befriending people in higher semesters than me. They are taking very interesting courses and I wanted a piece of that, early.

Up to a certain age, school is the primary environment where you will have peer to learn from. And grades will certainly invite comparison. And bad teachers will force comparison. It is common knowledge that school environments tend to be “small ponds” and a lot of people who were at the top of their peers have a rude awakening when moving into a larger pond like academia. And academia is a series of ever-more competitive ponds of course, all the way to the global stage.

Ponds with friends

The worst thing you can probably do is to choose the world as your pond. There are way too many people in there, many of which will have had more time and resources to hone their skills than you. Plus, they won’t even help you learn because they’re too busy doing their own stuff. Maybe they have a blog? But what is applicable for them might be less so for you.

So, here’s goal number one when choosing a pond. Choose people you can reach as your point of comparison. This will depend on your methods (and privilege). Horrible people will call this “your network”. I like to call it my friends and acquaintances.

The logic is as follows, people who you can reach tend to be in a sensible range of your skills. Maybe a bit higher or lower, but you tend to be in the same environment, for example meetups or forums. Secondly, people who you can actually talk to will give you a much more realistic view of their actual abilities and struggles, compared to the perfected world of self-depiction online. And finally, people who are your friends you can actually disagree with without feeling threatened, because the ongoing trust built will hopefully weather (sensible) disagreements.

Many Ponds

Now, there a lot of ponds out there where people already congregate. Search for the ones where access has basic human decency enforcement. Now, some of these ponds are gigantic and very nice full of people you can spend a lot of time with. But, watch out.

Ponds can break over horrible “forum drama” style stuff. And remember, some of these people will be your friends. It is very dangerous to rely on a single space. A chair with a single leg can’t stand.

Additionally, being part of a single pond or only very related ponds will steal some of the most important synthesis ideas of your life. You will find solutions of one area applicable to other areas and from the beautiful quadratic growth of number of pairs you can make from a list of topics, there is so much of this just not yet found. Plus, just knowing all the same stuff as a big group of others is kinda boring.

Liveable Ponds

Now, some people will snark at seeing friendships and acquaintances as something as solvable as this article may describe and I agree. These rules should always be broken at personal discretion. But I still think it is important to be aware of them. Additionally, I will say that ongoing learning is incredibly important to me and I find it something beautiful in all walks of life, not just in my career. So please consider ponds with people who have specialised knowledge which is not in your direct career. Find someone who is good at cooking or sewing.

That being said, if we are going to be planning so much around our ponds. The ponds be better good for us, beyond some instrumental benefit of knowing lots of smart people. There needs to be space for having fun, enjoying things together and learning about each other in new contexts. Note also, you do attract more people by having cool activities.