A Letter to Malcolm Gladwell

Dear Mr. Gladwell,

I've just finished reading your book Outliers.  I find myself forced to ask, can I also be one of them. The conclusion of the book is that we are all outliers, or we all can be, but it depends on what opportunities we are given and how we use them. I have written that too simply. It seems more complicated. Success does depend on luck or opportunities. However, those not raised with the know-how to handle themselves or others do not experience success. Now I am badly recapping your book, when what I really want is to ask a question.

I want to find out if I am capable of the success that lies in working at something I'm passionate about. How delicious it would be to have your analysis of my life, to uncover the social factors which have led me to where I am today. Since I don't have your analysis, I will do my best to make my own.

After reading your book, it seems to me firstly that I am lacking practice, specifically the ten thousand hours. I dropped out of the Piano Performance program in college because I thought I wasn't good enough, but your book helped me realize it was because I didn't study and practice enough. My father believed in doing things yourself. Although he could have let me live with him and helped with my tuition, he thought he was doing the best thing by kicking me out and letting me figure out how to pay for college myself.

My father is half Greek. Perhaps something in his ancestry had instilled in him this belief in independence. As a result, I worked three minimum wage jobs for a combined forty sometimes fifty hours a week to make enough money to pay for rent, food, and tuition. My father also didn't believe in loans and raised me to believe that going into debt was shameful. The first couple years I had small scholarships which helped with the price of tuition. By the time I joined the music program I no longer had scholarships and tuition was rising. Still, I was determined not to take out loans.

I didn't know any other students in my major who worked. Every person I knew was supported by their parents and/or had student loans. A few did work in the music library about ten hours a week. I did reasonably well my first year in the program, although I struggled in Keyboarding. We had to write the notes we heard, and I had never played by ear before. Memorizing sounds was my weakness and I avoided this practice. I had also never studied music theory or chord progressions.

I did not have a professional piano teacher (meaning someone who had a degree in Piano Performance) From the age of seven until sixteen I took lessons from various neighborhood piano teachers who taught while their kids ran amuck through the house. A legitimate teacher was expensive. At sixteen, when I found a professional teacher, my dad wouldn't pay for my lessons, so I worked in an ice cream shop and taught piano lessons to pay for my own lessons. I thought it was my lack of professional instruction that made me lag behind the other students in the areas of Keyboarding and Theory. Now I know in part it was.

But it was also because I was working so many hours to support myself and pay my own way. I married during my second year in the program and as a result lost my half-price tuition discount (received because my father worked in maintenance for the University). Dating and marriage further limited my time. The added financial burden of loosing my discount meant that I had to also find a better job. I found a job working for a credit card company, but the commute meant I had even less time than I had when I worked near campus.

The semester after I got this job I was failing two of my classes, and for the first time felt incompetent in my ability to learn and perform new songs. I told my piano teacher I was thinking about dropping out. He strongly urged me to apply for loans and scholarships. I didn't realize these could be used to live on as well as to pay tuition. I thought that even if I did apply for this money, I would still have to work to pay living expenses, and be in the same predicament. I dropped out. This is where my upbringing in the Church of Jesus Christ also played a part in my thinking and decision making.

The only reason I had chosen Piano Performance as a major was because I enjoyed playing the piano. I had already taught piano to children while I was in high school, and although I seemed to be proficient as a teacher, I did not enjoy it. Piano Performance was a vanity major. I never intended to use the degree, I intended to get married and be a stay at home mom. I had been taught by the culture of my religion that being a mother should be my highest aspiration, and it was. Although I did want to be able to say I had my degree, I didn't think it was necessary for my emotional or financial success.

I thought of myself as lacking compared to other students. I was sure my falling grades and lost confidence in my playing was due to the fact that I just wasn't as good as the other students, and that no amount of practice could make me better. Now I realize that if I had the support of my father, been willing to take out loans, if I'd grown up in a culture that didn't place motherhood over education, if I'd bucked at what I'd been taught, stopped working, and applied myself one thousand percent to studying and practicing, I would have been just fine. I would have been able to progress and complete my degree.

That is great weight to have lifted, to know that it wasn't my ability that was lacking. The musical ability was always there, the hours of practice were not. Thank you for helping me realize this.

I have recently completed my Bachelor of English degree. I am thirty-four years old. Up until now, it had always bothered me that I didn't have a degree. A year after dropping out from the music program I tried Accounting because I always liked math, and it seemed I would not be a stay at home mom and needed to find a lucrative career. That lasted a year before I dropped out again. Turns out I didn't like numbers as much as I thought I did.

I ended up working in customer service for an airline. I worked my way up through supervisor positions, but when the next step was management, I realized I didn't want to be a leader. I was missing out on too much with my kids. I was short on sleep and patience, and long on stress. I applied for a demotion. I wrote a post about that here. Since that time I have bounced between a couple different departments, but essentially doing the same thing: taking phone calls and answering customers' emails. While in this transitory stage I realized I wanted to be a writer like Jeanette Walls, Betty Smith, and Wallace Stegner. First, I worked on writing my personal history. Then, I worked on writing fiction using pieces of my own life. I found a writing group which helped me have a deadline to write a new chapter each week.

I knew I could continue to write without a degree, but I still wanted the title of graduate, and it may as well be in something that was going to help me in my creative writing endeavors, even if I wasn't going change careers after graduation. For many years I wasn't sure when I'd be able to get that elusive degree. I wasn't going to attempt it while raising two children and working full time. Though others have done more, I wanted to make sure I didn't set myself up for burnout after just a few semesters.

I figured worse case scenario I would go back to school when my kids were older or even grown up. Then something miraculous happened. My husband who had been working as a commercial plumber in new construction was offered a job in a hospital doing maintenance. It wasn't the job he wanted. He would no longer officially work as a plumber and it wasn't as much money as he wanted, but it was more than his previous company was paying, and it came with health insurance benefits, something I had been providing with my job up until then. This switch in my husbands career was necessary to allow me to go part-time.

After working part-time for a few months, I realized both my kids would be in Elementary school soon and I would find myself with an abundance of free time. This change in circumstance allowed me to get my degree. If it hadn't been for Mike's change in job, I wouldn't have gone back to school when I did.

During my last year of classes our kids seemed to require more help in their own studies, and more time doing extracurricular activities. We also took on the responsibility of moving my handicapped mother in with us to better take care of her. I thought once I graduated I would have so much more free time for writing. After all, I kept up with my classes, earning perfect grades and pumping out essays, surely I would be just as efficient after graduation, especially since now I can write about anything I want to. However, this has not been the case.

So far, it has been a busier year than expected. I have not even come near to the amount I thought I would write after graduation. I realize I am still a long way off from achieving ten thousand hours. I also hoped I would be noticed by one of my professors who would become a mentor. This never happened. I believe it didn't because I am very quiet in class and find it difficult to connect with people or ask for help. I had hoped by going to school I might build a new community for myself of literary academics, but I didn't make a single lasting friendship with any of my English peers. At this point I am not sure if going back to school will serve me in the future as far as connections. I am not sure if it is one of those 'right time, right place' scenarios that will prove to be essential to my making.

I wonder if I am like Joe Flom. Will I miss my opportunities because I have not learned to make the world into what I need to it be? I'm afraid I fall into the category of children whose parents were not involved in their education, who did not teach them to question those in authority, or that they were important enough to have their questions answered. I was not taught self-assurance or confidence. I hope through study and practice these are things I can learn, can change despite my history, just like the Korean Airline pilots.

I also worry how I will get ten thousand hours in. By my calculations I only have about one thousand hours clocked so far. Will it take another ten years, twenty? I'm not sure. I hope the former. One thing seems certain, that much of my time to write depends on Mike's career. Since he was hired at the hospital, he has improved his position year over year. He is one promotion away from paving the way for me to quit my job and write full time. I wonder if things will work out this way or another.

*

Fast forward two weeks since I've written the previous words in this post and I still haven't published them. I actually forgot all about it, until I started listening to Brene Brown's book The Power of Vulnerability.  I chose it because after reading your book, Mr. Gladwell, I realized I needed to learn confidence. I'm not very far into Brown's book yet, but I do realize publishing this makes me vulnerable: to comments, to other people's opinions about my life. Even though I'm not sure there's more than two subscribers to this blog, and even if no one reads this, it's still. . .out there.

To answer my own question: yes, I am capable of becoming an outlier. I believe no matter how many years it takes, I will get my ten thousand hours. I believe I can re-educated myself through books to develop qualities not learned during my upbringing. I no longer worry or hope or wonder. I believe.


Many Thanks,

Anya