Hard work Vs Talent
Brittany Lewis
Dr. Muriel M. Brennan
English 105
April 24, 2015
Talent versus. Hard Work
Natural talent vs. hard work is a topic that has been debated by people of all professions throughout history. It’s also known as Nature vs. Nurture, the difference between one’s innate ability vs. ability affected by personal experience. In a study, the Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues asked violin students at a music academy to estimate the amount of time they had devoted to practice since they started playing. By age 20, the students whom the faculty nominated as the “best” players had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours, compared with just under 8,000 hours for the “good” players and not even 5,000 hours for the least skilled. Summing up Mr. Ericsson’s research in his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell observes that practice isn’t “the thing you do once you’re good” but “the thing you do that makes you good.” He adds that intellectual ability — the trait that an I.Q. score reflects — turns out not to be that important. “Once someone has reached an I.Q. of somewhere around 120,” he writes, “having additional I.Q. points doesn’t seem to translate into any measureable real-world advantage” (164). David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, restates this idea in his book The Social Animal, while Geoff Colvin, in his book Talent Is Overrated, adds that “I.Q. is a decent predictor of performance on an unfamiliar task, but once a person has been at a job for a few years, I.Q. predicts little or nothing about performance”(32). Of course there is natural talent; it is not a myth. This can be seen from the achievements of people like Mozart, Michelangelo, and Einstein etc. These people have more natural aptitude than others in certain areas. However, talent can only get them so far; instead, hard work and dedication is what has turned them into the ‘greats’ that we know them as now. The term talented or gifted is often
Dr. Muriel M. Brennan
English 105
April 24, 2015
Talent versus. Hard Work
Natural talent vs. hard work is a topic that has been debated by people of all professions throughout history. It’s also known as Nature vs. Nurture, the difference between one’s innate ability vs. ability affected by personal experience. In a study, the Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues asked violin students at a music academy to estimate the amount of time they had devoted to practice since they started playing. By age 20, the students whom the faculty nominated as the “best” players had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours, compared with just under 8,000 hours for the “good” players and not even 5,000 hours for the least skilled. Summing up Mr. Ericsson’s research in his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell observes that practice isn’t “the thing you do once you’re good” but “the thing you do that makes you good.” He adds that intellectual ability — the trait that an I.Q. score reflects — turns out not to be that important. “Once someone has reached an I.Q. of somewhere around 120,” he writes, “having additional I.Q. points doesn’t seem to translate into any measureable real-world advantage” (164). David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, restates this idea in his book The Social Animal, while Geoff Colvin, in his book Talent Is Overrated, adds that “I.Q. is a decent predictor of performance on an unfamiliar task, but once a person has been at a job for a few years, I.Q. predicts little or nothing about performance”(32). Of course there is natural talent; it is not a myth. This can be seen from the achievements of people like Mozart, Michelangelo, and Einstein etc. These people have more natural aptitude than others in certain areas. However, talent can only get them so far; instead, hard work and dedication is what has turned them into the ‘greats’ that we know them as now. The term talented or gifted is often