DEMYSTIFYING SUCCESS: HOW YOUR BRAIN IS AS GOOD AS THE BEST.

Growing up, in high school, I remember how my father would say that the best student didn’t have two heads, that all the student did was study hard and prepare well for exams. I was not a bad student academically; on the contrary, I was actually quite good, even though I admit now that I might have been a little lazy and maybe quite uninterested in studying so hard. Regardless, I always made the top ten in class.

I also did know the ‘best student’ then. He didn’t quite like me, I remember. His name was Tunde Adeniran, but we called him Tunene, a quiet young lad with round, oily face. He wasn’t really good at sports and played very little tennis on occasion. He would just sit in the classroom or hostel room and read his school books. He wanted to be a neuro-surgeon. It was because of him that I learnt about Siamese twins and heard about Ben Carson, that was in J.S.S 3. Tunde didn’t like me because he felt I was unserious with my studies and therefore I would be bad company, so he avoided me.

Many other students who studied perhaps even harder than Tunde, and prepared well for exams too, began to suggest that it was because Tunde was born pre-mature that’s why his brain was unusually sharper than others. It was easy for such a notion to fly around and stick, and everyone believed it, so that many concluded that they would never be able to beat Tunde in any academic test or examination.

At first glance – and it is quite easy to see why – it would seem actually true that Tunde’s academic success was tied to him having a sharper brain from being born pre-mature. However, Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers proffers a different suggestion, a more reasonable one and I tend to agree with. Like Tunde, Outliers are those who have been given opportunities – and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

You see, Tunde is the youngest of four children. His immediate sibling is about seven years older than he is. He grew up almost by himself, kept company by the many books his siblings were done with from their classes. While Tunde was in high school his immediate elder brother, Kola, was already studying to be a medical doctor in the university. During the holidays Tunde would sit to read Biology and Medical texts. His eldest brother is a pilot so growing up Tunde was also exposed to a lot of Physics and Engineering texts as well. Now, the same holiday period while Tunde swam in an ocean of knowledge beyond his age, most of his mates were on trips to America or the UK, watching TV all day and reading comic books. When school resumed the next term, Tunde would astound the teachers and fellow students all over again.
Now, while I have nothing against kids watching TV and going on trips during the holiday period, I hope you see the point I am trying to make here. People are not better than the other because some people have been configured differently from others.

Eventually, it becomes clear that people like Tunde, people who climb higher, who we often consider to be exceptionally different, are not so different from us in the ways we consider them to be. They are products of history and community, of opportunities and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky – but all critical to making them who they are.
The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.