Think back to your school years. For some of you, that will be longer ago than others. Now, remember having that big test on Friday, the one you were supposed to study all week for? Right. Well, if you were like me at all, you were outside playing with most of the other kids all week long instead of actually studying.
So what happened on test day? You and your friends probably sweated it pretty hard. Perhaps you crammed the night before, or better yet, right before the test. To make sure it was fresh in your mind, right? You ground through the test; sweat beading on your young brow, your mouth awash in the metallic taste of fear. Then the bell rang and you raced out of school, free for the two blissful days adults refer to as “The Weekend”. All thoughts and worries about that test vanished the moment you crossed the threshold, replaced by happy thoughts of ball games, bicycle riding, and Saturday morning cartoons.
Well, what happened on Monday? The teacher passed out the graded exams, often with a disapproving look on her face, all the while you and your playtime cohorts were squirming in your chairs, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. Sure enough, the teacher delivered; usually in the form of red pen marks slashing at your possible future. No Ivy League for you I’m afraid. You’ll be sweeping the floors of this very institution if you are lucky.
Once we all had our fates in our hands, we collectively held our breath, hoping (some of us praying) that the entire class blew it as badly as we did. The Germans have a word for this: schadenfreude. It means, taking joy in the misfortunes of others. Now I wouldn’t say what I felt on those days was joy. You see the reason we all hoped that the entire class went down the toilet together was because of the magical power of The Curve.
The Curve was a dark art practiced by teachers since time immemorial, yet firmly grounded in statistics. I won’t bore you with the statistics part of the story, since I saw how many of you seemed to relate so easily to my tale of not studying. It would just be a waste of breath. Instead, I will regale you with legends The Curve’s powers.
You see, The Curve did wonders for the grades of us slackers. It elevated them up to star status, with zero additional work. It was the ultimate in something for nothing. The proverbial “free lunch’. By shifting the highest grade in the class up to an ‘A’, all test scores rose by an equal amount, rounding out The Curve and keeping the distribution the same as before the adjustment. Those that had scored a ‘C’ might now rest firmly in the ‘B’ range. Those that had really bombed might be spared an ‘F’, though still would likely face difficult conversations with their parents over that Curvature Induced ‘D’.
The Curve had only one known weakness. Despite the teacher with even the best intentions, it was powerless against this one known defense…
…the Geeky Kid.
This kid was like Kryptonite. The Curve crumbled in awe at his fantastic power. And the teacher adored him, secretly wishing all of us were more like him.
You see, the Geeky Kid made The Curve impossible to invoke because he had scored the highest grade in the class on that test, and in some cases, as legend tells it, he even scored 100%. On even rarer occasions, when extra credit was available, it was rumored that he even exceeded that score. No amount of shifting the grades would help those of us in the bottoms quartiles. He had ruined us.
Whether he studied all week or was bestowed with celestial knowledge beyond human comprehension, is irrelevant. The fact was; he killed our chances of ever playing outside before a big test again.
Some of you have read or heard me speak about what I call The Rule of the Serengeti. To catch the rest of you up a bit, The Rule of the Serengeti states that the predator does not choose the most well nourished, muscular, delicious pack animal as his prey. Instead, he picks off the slow, weak, sickly ones that stray too far back from the rest of the herd.
This is classic risk management. By surrounding myself with other, more tempting targets (in this case, my classmates), I am more likely to escape being one. Just as in living on the plains of Africa, when taking tests in the Geeky Kids class, it’s best to at least keep up with the herd. Of course, this is just an example. If your parents were anything like mine, getting a ‘C’ still meant you “weren’t living up to your potential” and meant you couldn’t stay up for The Late Show for the next few weeks.
Now of course, we must address the other side of the equation, if for no other reason than I know many of you would much rather be outside playing. So I’ll get on with it…
Just as there is downside risk with playing all week long, there is similar risk in studying all week. By sequestering ourselves in our bedrooms and rereading the same passages from our textbooks, we have a couple of possible outcomes. Perhaps we study like our lives depended on it, still come out in the middle of the pack, and get graded on a curve anyway. While this gives us the coveted ‘A’ or ‘B’ spot in the grade book, it means we wasted valuable play time. Our other possible outcome, and one far more dark, is that we study all week, ace the test, thereby blowing The Curve for everyone else, and get our ass kicked on the playground at the first recess. In other words, we become the Geeky Kid.
There is little redemption in the second scenario, partly because once we have hosed our comrades, there is no sense in going back to our old ways. You see, there is now no one left to play with all week instead of studying because they all hate us for screwing them on The Curve. This means the rest of our lives are relegated to wedgies and trying to ‘game’ eHarmony to get hooked up with Cindy Crawford. Sorry, I promised not to go into the statistics portion of the story.
So, what’s the point in all of this reminiscing? Simple. This is really the one point in your lives where being a solid ‘B’ student is the best course of action. You are not a weak enough target to be picked out by an overzealous Attorney General, hacker gang, or government busybody, and you are trying hard enough to show that you are at least as good as the majority and “living up to your potential”. And that point is what it’s all about.
You see, what it comes down to is Due Care. Due Care is loosely defined as being “that which a reasonable person, under similar circumstances, would have done”. If the majority of the population was playing outside at least part of the week, and were still scoring a ‘B’ on the test, then you shouldn’t waste your formative years locked up in your bedroom studying. You should play a little, study a little, and shoot for the middle ground. It also means that in the business of security management, you are a less likely target than your peers, and have demonstrated a reasonable attempt to remain so, all while keeping your costs at a level commensurate with your industry peers.
In other words, if you spend all of your time trying to blow The Curve, you aren’t getting enough sunshine.
Go outside and play.
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