Sometimes, finishing second is worse than finishing last. I was introduced to this sad truth when I was an undergraduate at IIT-Kanpur and I was reminded once again of that truth when I read the NY Times piece on Rajat Gupta. The fourth year in an IIT is particularly hard on second besters, for it is clear by then that you can no longer come first and the people at the very top are permanently out of reach. The students at the very top are different. They are more gifted, harder working, more strategic with their time or simply luckier. When a certain kind of second bester, realizes that he cannot be Hillary or Gagarin, he unravels. He starts smoking and drinking — though usually not so much that the secure scholarship or job is threatened- and ever so often falls in with a much more dangerous crowd; the losers who never had anything to prove, or worse, townies who are not part of the IIT treadmill at all.
A zero short of a billion
A zero short of a billion
A zero short of a billion
Sometimes, finishing second is worse than finishing last. I was introduced to this sad truth when I was an undergraduate at IIT-Kanpur and I was reminded once again of that truth when I read the NY Times piece on Rajat Gupta. The fourth year in an IIT is particularly hard on second besters, for it is clear by then that you can no longer come first and the people at the very top are permanently out of reach. The students at the very top are different. They are more gifted, harder working, more strategic with their time or simply luckier. When a certain kind of second bester, realizes that he cannot be Hillary or Gagarin, he unravels. He starts smoking and drinking — though usually not so much that the secure scholarship or job is threatened- and ever so often falls in with a much more dangerous crowd; the losers who never had anything to prove, or worse, townies who are not part of the IIT treadmill at all.