Outliers Malcolm Gladwell Analysis

In June 1988 my life was forever changed. However, I wouldn't be born for another ten years. So, how can a day where I had no trace of existence be the day that shaped my life? Simple, on this day that my father joined the United States Navy. Fresh out of high school, his decision would create a chain reaction that would soon become my life. Malcolm Gladwell’s claim about the ecology of an organism is the entire premise of my life--I am the tree. “It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't” (Outliers, Gladwell 19). I am from that decision my dad made in 1988. This decision influenced my fate from the beginning since it would bring him to my mom, halfway across the world. It didn’t …show more content…
She was the one constant in a life full of changes, other than my parents, that I looked up to and wholeheartedly respected, and she had called me stupid and less than her. After that moment, I took every class she had when I was finally in that grade. I started paying attention in class and getting straight A’s but kept my social life (meaning I still made time to swing.) Gladwell wrote how “intelligence has a threshold” (Outliers, 80). I might’ve been born with a lower I.Q. than Tiffany, but I was just as capable as her. I didn't need hours of homework or even tutoring to catch up, I just need to listen; when I did, I realized how easy it was to see the connections between things. By the time I started high school, I was all but obsessed with catching up to her or beating her. This obsession never got me to put in extra work than her though, I wanted to show her I was always capable (plus my parents would've probably lectured me if they found out.) Except, with every success of mine, she down played it: an A in Pre-Ap Language was because “I had an easier teacher than her,” being pulled into Pre-Ap French II was because “the teacher like her and was upset when she dropped after French I,” and--the most reoccurring--every position or award I earned in JROTC was because “I was her little sister.” To most this would’ve made them bitter but I had never been taught to view it that way. My household was full of love, I didn’t see this as my sister putting me down; I just thought I had to try harder. So I

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