It's 2:45pm on Thursday in the Lipincott Library, and my Accelerated Accounting Final is in 3 hours and 15 minutes. I have all but thrown in the towel. I'm reading the words on the page but I don't understand what they mean. This reminds me of my undergrad days in classes like Microelectronics when the words on the page might well have been written in another language. It's an unsettling feeling of defeat. Pure and utter defeat. You don't want to give up, but giving up would be so comforting. Looks like this is going to be my first LT of my Wharton career. If I can avoid an LT here, it will be a small miracle. The irony? I got an A in this class in undergrad. I guess that tells you something about the quality of the competition at Wharton.This led to a conversation with my neighbor in the library about strengths and weaknesses. At this point in our lives and careers, do we focus on our strengths or weaknesses? I'm starting to understand what my strengths and weaknesses are. I've usually considered myself to be 'well-rounded' in that I can hold my own in most areas. But, being that as it may, I've realized that you can't compare yourself to the general population. If you do, you'll come out pretty far ahead in most categories and won't really know what are your true strengths and weaknesses against the people who matter. Rather, you need to compare yourself to your peers (classmates for example), so the bar is set higher in every aspect. Then, with this new mean, see where you are relative to your peers. That will give you a better idea of your strengths and weaknesses.
My current thinking is to spend 3/4 of my time focusing on my strengths and 1/4 on my weaknesses. With my real career beginning now, there's not much time to waste doing things I'm not good at. I think my 20s were the time to address those weaknesses. What do you think? Should we focus on our strengths or weaknesses?
3 comments:
Ravi,
What I have heard is that your strengths will get you ahead quickly until, somewhere down the road, your weaknesses will help you reach your level of incompetency sooner or later.
Bottom line, if you want a short whizbang career sharpen the sword you have and use it, whereas if you want a long steady rewarding career, you need to build your armor.
I have been thinking about this a lot too....I think it's imporant to focus on strengths and weaknesses 50/50.
Well said on both comments. I think you'll make your money from your strengths, but you want to soften your weaknesses enough so that they don't hold you back. That's why I come up with 3/4 strengths to 1/4 weaknesses ratio.
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