“I may have to start afresh as a wage earner, which is not easy at my time of life,” lamented a 64 year-old American male in his cover letter when he applied for a job in the early 1930s. He had to seek employment again after the 1929 Wall Street crash wiped out all his savings.
Yale University, the institution he had written to, instantly granted him a professorship, a lab, and a lavish stipend.
What was it about the 64 year-old that drove Yale to be so generous? He was none other than the pioneering neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing (1869 – 1939), who invented a series of fatalities-reducing surgical procedures that are still in use today. In his lifetime he was nominated for the Nobel Prize at least 38 times.
I’m familiar with Cushing’s job-seeking note because I often quote from it. Every time I show students a writing trick that will help them stand out among their peers, and they respond with “Is it worth the trouble? My school teacher has said I only need to do this and that and she will be satisfied,” I will tell them the Cushing story. If Cushing had simply followed the conventional wisdom of his profession, in his old age he wouldn’t have been able to receive that package from Yale, because in the Great Depression he would simply have been one the many penniless brain surgeons out there. Since we can never predict what fate will throw at us, we should always do beyond what is required of us, so that we are more likely to have what it takes to soldier through hard times.
There is another downside to only fulfilling the teacher’s expectations. When students with this mindset apply to university, their application package will have a cookie cutter look – on paper, they will come across as more or less indistinguishable from all those students who have likewise been happy with only reaching their teachers’ requirements. Since, as former Oxbridge Admissions tutor member Barry Webb points out, the top universities “are not looking for some predetermined template which all applicants should fit into. In fact, it is quite the opposite: they are looking for individuality and not conformity,” students who don’t go above and beyond what is expected of them may miss the chance to be instructed by the best minds in tertiary education.
Michelle Ng
英國牛津大學畢業，前《蘋果日報》和《眾新聞》專欄作家，現在身在楓葉國，心繫中國大陸和香港。
聯絡方式： michelleng.coach@proton.me
個人網站： https://michellengwritings.com
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