Rajesh on Smartness
My first premise is that smartness is what we call in chemistry a state function. A state function is something where you don't really care how one gets to that state; all that matters is that you're there, period.
My favorite example is how common people don't really care how graphite gets converted into diamond. All they care is that the allotrope of carbon they're holding in their hand is a diamond stone, and that it's shiny, that's all.
People don't give a damn as to how smart people got smart in the first place. They don't care whether you cheated, whether you lied, whether you worked your ass off, or whether you copied it off someone else. All they care is that you're smart and that they can capitalize on your smartness.
The second premise is that smartness is something that slowly seeps into you through a very natural process of osmosis. I don't believe smart people get smart overnight as much as smart people would like to tell you so. And I don't believe you can force smartness into yourself or into someone else. The smartness factor just comes to you, slowly but steadily, when it creeps into you and finally takes control over you, and dictates how you think, how you speak, how you dress, how you parse and process things, how you listen, how you read, how you plan, and basically how you do everything. It changes the fundamental way you view the world.
The most exciting thing about being smart is that smart people seldom realize they're actually smart. This is premise three. This phenomenon is not unlike the fact that good programmers never really know they're good programmers. Even if you tell it to them, they'll simply take it as a compliment in passing, but never really get to believing it. Perhaps because it's the way our society is structured: We consider it taboo to think, believe, and call ourselves smart.
This is the real beauty that makes us admire smart people and gape in awe at them when you catch their smartness in action. In a sense, the beauty lies in the irony of it all because the first rule of being smart is to be able to recognize other smart people. And if you don't realize that you're one of them, you can't really be smart, can you?
That being said, the fact that smart people don't really know they're smart gets them into some real trouble everyday. Their smartness gets talked about so often in their absence to the point where it starts to become almost rude. There are all these comments constantly flying all over the place about this dude who's like real smart, but is too modest to admit it. Guess what, smart people don't admit that they're smart not because they want to be modest, but because even they don't know it to begin with!
To the smart one, other people pushing jobs on him just because he's smart isn't really taken as a compliment. It's more like the smart guy thinks the other guy needs an excuse to push work on him. And everyone knows no one refuses a favour request when presented alongside a compliment.
In the same light, the worst thing you could probably tell a smart guy is "you're a smart guy, you can figure it out." Because even if the smart guy actually could figure it out, he probably won't be able to now that you've connected his ability to figure things out to his level of smartness. From premise three, we know that smart people don't really understand they're smart, so they'll resort to every single possible technique at their disposal to disprove the hypothesis that they're smart.
Confused enough? Me too.
So next time you meet a really smart guy, don't let him into the secret that he's smart because he's not going to believe you. Don't worry about how he got smart. And don't bother questioning his ideals and his beliefs. The only thing you should be thinking about is how do I take advantage of this smart dude, and how do I capitalize on his smartness.
Canada's Silicon Valley
Perhaps a year or so ago, Waterloo was dubbed the "World's Most Intelligent Community". Here's my take on that.
Waterloo is a lot more high-tech than other lesser-known universities when it comes to processing student's confirmation of enrollment forms, otherwise known as Certificate 2's, Schedule 2's and a dozen other more names: we first fill out paper forms which take half-an-hour each, then we wait in line for two hours to get to the one single clerk at the financial aid office and have our forms approved, then we take those forms downstairs to a NSLSC rep and wait in line for another half hour or so. Then we walk for another 15 minutes to a corner store called Aussies that sells envelopes. We put in our forms in the envelope and seal the envelope with water drops from a water tap two flight of stairs above. We can't wet the envelope glue with our tongues because we have heard one could get "high" by licking those things. We weren't prepared to take that risk: We had to get back to work after this episode, and we were sure our boss wouldn't particularly appreciate us saying to him: "Wazzup bro, how's it hangin'?" Better safe than sorry, you know. So we tightly seal the envelope with carefully placed water droplets, only to realize that the address the envelope is to be sent out to is on the form itself. So we walk down again another two flight of stairs to buy another envelope, only to find another queue there. We try to pay for the envelope (35 cents) using our WATCARD only to find that the WATCARD machine broke down five minutes ago. And they do no accept debit. And of course, no one carries change around. We give the girl at the counter a twenty-dollar bill, but she too doesn't have change either. So we go to the nearby stationery store to try and exchange our bill for some change, but they won't do that unless you buy something from them first. Our cellphone rings at that precise time and our boss wants to meet with us A.S.A.P. due to some emergency that has just crept up. We hurriedly grab the cheapest item at the store, a single steadler pencil, only to find that that a single pencil valued at 20 cents sells for $2.00, but an entire pack of twelve pencils costs only $2.40. We, being in no mood for negotiation since boss wants us at work asap, buy the single pencil for $2.00, get the change, go back to Aussies, buy the envelope, tear open the original envelope, copy the address onto the new envelope, go back two flight of stairs up to get some more water drops to seal our new envelope. The garbage can to throw away the old torn envelope is on the other side of the room, so we walk all the way to the other side of the room just to throw an envelope because throwing it any where else can get you fined up to a hundred dollars. We then go back downstairs and drop off our envelope in a post box which first takes a good ten minutes of asking around to find.
World's most intelligent community indeed.
Even if that's the case, certainly I'm not part of it.
Hidden Depths
This is going to be one heck of a long post, so hold on to your socks tight as you read carefully. There's much to be learnt about what an egotistic, self-centered narcissist I really am.
I've been pretty impressed with the way things have been working out for me over the last five months. By the end of April this year, as I was wrapping up my co-op term at Safe Software, I was telling myself: "Alright Rajesh, you really need to get your bearings straight." So I promised myself to not make any more blog posts until the first week of September. Not until I had meticulously executed every single facet of my master plan with such clinical precision capable of capturing even an expert surgeon's admiration.
It all happened during those twenty-five minutes spent sitting on Dr. Braverman's chair, my dentist. Trust me, when you're sitting on that chair and having all four of your wisdoms pulled out one after the other in succession with nothing but a local anesthetic to keep you going, you find yourself making promises you wouldn't dare stray away from…
One week later, I took my driver's test and passed on the first attempt even though it had snowed so heavily that morning, at least by Vancouver standards. Check.
A few days after, I enrolled myself in two extra courses even though I was well aware that I would barely be able to manage the five courses I was already enrolled in. Check.
A couple of weeks into the study term, Professor Miguel Anjos from the department of management sciences contacted me a second time to ask if I was interested in pursuing research under his supervision in the area of combinatorial optimization. I gladly accepted the offer. Check.
Soon enough it was time to find a job for the eight-month co-op term that was to follow. I was fortunate to hear about one of the most challenging projects I would ever see during my entire undergraduate career. Professor Ken McKay, also from the management sciences department, is championing the initiative to completely transform the co-op process at the University of Waterloo. The process aims to change the way technology and information systems are exploited to ease the whole match-making process. I was fortunate enough to be selected to be part of the project and was consequently employed for the next eight months. Check.
Perhaps a week or two later, I had firmly decided it was high-time I took a break and visited India. This was to be my first real vacation in five solid years. I'll be leaving in December and will be there for three weeks. I was last there in July 2002, such a long time ago, and have heard that things have changed quite drastically since. We'll have to see. India trip finalized. Check.
The month of August was frantic. A set of seven examinations, one of them worth as much as 80% of the course. No big deal. A lot of science courses at Waterloo are so watered down that you could pretty much crunch-up everything during the last few days before the exam and still manage a 95% without having paid so much an ant's attention to the course during the term. That's basically what I ended up doing to three of my seven courses. Eventually though, all the toil during the term had paid off: I managed to get my ninety average. Check.
A lot of people ask me if I'm "crazy" taking seven courses a term. The answer is of course, not really. You see, the way engineering works at Waterloo, we don't get to pick the courses we really want to take. I'm in nanotech, but I only really enjoy at most two nano-specific courses each term in addition to the calculus courses. The rest of the courses I find are kinda boring, some even bogus, and are being taken solely for lack of alternative. So the only way I can take the courses I really want is by adding them as extras and options. But even that is subject to so many rules, conditions and much form-filling fanfare.
I guess the real question is why can't I just take the courses I want to and be done with it so long as I'm fulfilling the necessary prereqs? Why I can't take a variational calculus course, an English rhetoric course, an astronomy course, a sociology course, a proteins course, a hard-core compilers course, and a drama course, all in one single term? Why am I so constrained? Why are people making decisions, bad decisions, for me? Cohort systems are great, but only if I have the option of stepping out of them when I want to.
I dream of a day when University for an undergrad will be nothing but a pool of about 500 courses, a day when I'm free to mix and match any course combination I want from this pool. The minute I fulfill certain credit requirements, I get a degree and I leave. The way it's being done now, I feel like a lemming, graduating with the same academic skill-set as the remaining 70 people in my class. The same courses, the same professors, the same assignments, the same exams, the same everything.
I find that taking seven courses, at a time when most others are only taking four, and more importantly at a time when motivation levels are at an all time low, simply reduces to a trivial problem of time management. It now becomes a game of monopoly — except you're no longer trading property. You're trading time instead. And you may collect £200 each time you pass Go.
Sometime last week I set seven courses to be the bare minimum hereafter. Nothing less than that. Eight perhaps some day when I have the guts, but never five. Never six. I used to tell myself in the mirror before: "Rajesh, set yourself high standards, then go implement them." I have set myself a standard. Now I just have to go away and implement it. Check.When exams got over, I was exhausted beyond imagination. I had made it through the hundred-day marathon, but on the 13th, I couldn't stay at Waterloo one day longer. I caught a flight to Vancouver the very evening my exams got over. It was time to rest for a good two weeks — only to start all over again after.
You know in software development, you'll often hear people talking about the "Iceberg Model". Sometimes I like to think of myself as an iceberg.
Harmless and timid from the outside.
Tall, strong and powerful from the inside.
Addendum: The title for this post comes from this Google Image search.
