My husband and I have been married for going on 28 years. This fact alone is proof that God exists because my ineffectiveness is a cross that my husband bears every day of his life. We were talking the other night about the difference between effective people and ineffective people and Hubby said it was analogous to the way chimpanzees have nearly identical DNA to humans, except for one or two tiny little chromosomes. My sister and her husband are Highly Effective People in the extreme. She is a mucky-muck with the World Trade Organization; he runs the Geneva, Switzerland, office of a major multinational law firm. They renovated their rental house before buying the house across the road and increasing its square footage by 60%. Meanwhile, both of their sons became Eagle Scouts and were accepted into ivy league colleges. I took comfort in having a cleaner house than my sister.
Sister and Mister are shining examples of Highly Effective People. They make the world a better place, not in grand, sweeping ways, but by living exemplary lives. Lives which make the rest of us feel inadequate. What is interesting is how many Highly Effective People there are who make the world a worse place. Take Adolphe Hitler, for example: highly effective, amazingly effective, criminally insane. A lesser example is George W. Bush, 41st President of the United States. I consider him a sleeper because he was a mediocre student, failed businessman, and so-so governor of Texas. Thanks to a little help from his family and friends, he landed in the White House where the VP and his cronies instructed him in the ways of Highly Effective People. The result: two un-funded wars, a bankrupted federal government, and the most dysfunctional congress in history. Talk about effectiveness!
Moving from the Macro- to the Micro-View, we have Carly U., a former friend of Daughter #2. Carly U and Daughter #2 shared first names and were referred to as "The Carlys" and "Carly F. and Carly U." CU was everyone's darling: blonde, blue-eyed, tall, tan,a good golfer, straight-A student, etc., etc. While sports recruiting is forbidden at our school, it would not surprise me one bit if CU received a generous scholarship in exchange for agreeing to attend TPBPS (Toney Palm Beach Private School). I am easily swayed and bought right in to the CU story lock, stock, and barrel. While I never worshiped on the alter of Carly U., I believed that she was truly exceptional. I must confess that I was happy that my wonderful Daughter #2 had such an illustrious and Highly Effective friend. Networking starts young these days.
It was the 10th grade science project that showed me that the empress had no clothes! Daughter #2 and CU were partners in a project to study the quality of water from different sources. Science projects do not have to prove anything other than an understanding of the rubric. It took me a while to convince Daughter #2 of this fact. In the end, the girls invented a bunch of plausible test results to plug into a spreadsheet demonstrating that treated water was cleaner than that which was drawn directly from a well or from a five-gallon bottle of "spring water". My epiphany came when I was helping Daughter #2 compile the notebook and tri-fold display for the science fair. CU's main contribution was to write the conclusion. I was expecting to be wowed by CU's writing, after all she was one of the top students in the grade, acing every test, exceeding expectations, and generally making everyone else look like a slacker. So I read the paragraph she contributed to the effort. THE PARAGRAPH! And it was garbage:
Conclusion:
In conclusion, we believe that this experiment was very successful. Most results were satisfying and reassuring. Our hypothesis is that the most publicly exposed water may be in wonderful quality or greatly contaminated. Although we have some poor quality in certain some of the tests for different samples, the majority of the sampled water is fantastic. One major mistake that we did not consider is the distance between our homes. However, this mistake was also advantageous because we were able to collect samples from areas with entirely different water sources. Another mistake was that we didn't make sure that we received all we ordered; although we had to eliminate one test, we were still able to continue testing other aspects of water quality. We believe we had good time judgment for testing, but beginning earlier definitely would have helped. We have fulfilled our purpose; we assured ourselves that the water that has been drunk in highly populated areas is healthy for consumption.
I read this out loud to Daughter #2 who said in her defense, "Carly likes to use big words." To which I responded, "THIS IS GARBAGE! THE SMARTEST HIGHEST ACHIEVING GIRL IN YOUR GRADE WRITES GARBAGE!" Daughter #2 took the paragraph and re-read it in the privacy of her own room. A couple of hours later she came out and said, "Mom, what are we going to do? I called Carly and she said it was perfect the way it was and was not going to change a word." Then it began to dawn on me. Who had done the research to decide on a project? Daughter #2. Who had purchased the supplies? Daughter #2. Who had written the proposal to the science teacher? Daughter #2. Who had organized the experiment sessions? Daughter #2. Who had documented (doctored) the results? Daughter #2. Who had assembled the project notebook? Daughter #2. The ONLY contribution made by CU was the ineptly written conclusion in which she stated that "the results were conclusive" in 1,000 words. Daughter #2 took it upon herself to "edit" the conclusion. CU's reaction: "Wow, you really changed it a lot."
Their project took first place in the science fair and CU got most of the credit. She did nothing other than show up for meetings and write a paragraph of meaningless nonsense, but because of her ability to outshine everyone else, the glory was hers to bask in. This is Lesson #1 in how a number of Highly Effective People operate: behind them there is quite likely a team of highly ineffective people who do all the work. I'm thinking it's time for us Highly Ineffective People to wise up.
Copyright 2012 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment