How does Gladwell’s conclusive Matthew Effect apply to you? What has been your experience?
I believe that in some ways Gladwell's Matthew Effect applies to me but in others it doesn't. For example Gladwell is basically saying that people born in the first few months of the year make it to the top however that isn't necessarily true. Of the 50 students that were apart of the middle school who had Algebra 1 8th grade year only 6 of us ended up in Algebra 2 and Geometry our freshman year which gave us an advantage over our fellow classmates. Our birthdays are in August, October, October, December, July and May. None of us were born within the first few months of the year yet we still are in a sense above our classmates.
However, I do believe that special opportunities have a lot to do with success and that cutoff dates do too. Fortunately for me I was lucky enough to have parents who didn't believe in baby talking me and took it upon themselves to teach me things a long time before I was even old enough to start school. Luckily for me I was able to go to preschool at 3 years old where I learned (or rather relearned) things like counting and the alphabet. The fact that I wasn't 4 stopped me from moving on to going to school regardless of the fact that I knew everything all the 4 year olds should have known. So I went to preschool, pre-k and kindergarten where I basically learned the same things over and over again to the point where I was able to teach these things to other students by kindergarten. I believe that all of these things have something to do with who I am and what I have achieved thus far.
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