Who Is Malcom Gladwell's Outliers: The Story Of Success?

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“We sometimes think of being good at mathematics as an innate ability […] it’s not so much ability as attitude” Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcom Gladwell. The quote sends a powerful message; anyone can be good at math (although this principle is not limited to just math) if they have the right attitude and work hard enough. Ever since I read this, I have always thought about it whenever I found myself struggling with anything school related. Those instances in my life have always ended up proving the quote to be true. One specific and important example to me took place last school year during spring break. At the time, my physics teacher was trying to cram as much knowledge into our heads in order to prepare us sufficiently for the AP Physics 1 exam. He had taught at a very slow pace for the majority of the year and was beginning to regret it. Not only that, but PARCC testing also took away precious time that we could have used learning material. He realized that we would not learn everything in time and because of that, decided that it would be best if the students taught themselves two chapters over spring break. …show more content…
I was not very pleased by it either but I did not overreact like many other students. I saw it as a challenge and treated it as such. At the start of spring break I was able to get through the first part of the first chapter fairly easily. However, it quickly became very difficult since I did not have anyone nearby to ask questions to clarify or explain concepts to me. I ended up spending one to two hours more a day than I had planned to. I began texting friends to ask them if they understood some of the more difficult sections but the response was almost always no. I managed to finish learning the two chapters, for the most part, with two days left to