Ted Talk Theme

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I began mulling over the goals I have for my life after being accepted into medical school. Simultaneously, I was worrying about possible sources of future failure. This period of introspection drew me to watch Larry Smith’s TED Talk, “Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career.” How fear diminishes aspiration and successfully establishes dominion over man, the importance of exploring alternative routes to one’s passion, and acknowledging and understanding how to respond to a sometimes non-meritocratic system in America were three themes from Professor Smith’s discussion that captured my attention. The TED Talk has helped me realize that I have a singular purpose: the goal of my life is to live it. I will follow my ambitions and dreams, minimizing worry by, one, taking preventative measures to avoid pitfalls, and, two, facing failure when I come across it. I more clearly see that there are many routes to my passion for improving pediatric mental health. If I …show more content…
“great careers are a matter of luck,” “only geniuses hold great careers”) as we place a mental wall between us and our passions. Professor Smith explains that these self-rationalizations diminish aspiration and can, for the most part, be distilled down to fear. During a first listen to the TED Talk, I understood what was being said as fear holding us back. However, when I replayed the example Larry Smith gives about a man speaking to his son about having settled (rather than following his dreams), I pieced together how fear successfully establishes dominion over man by being an intergenerational, socially reproducible concept: the fear that prevents one man from following his dreams is vertically transmitted, very much like a disease, to his son and so on. This makes it all the more important to surmount fear, achieving our own success and simultaneously acting as a proxy (and modeling one’s