Excellent Sheep
Good at hurdles, bad at choosing a road
Two completely different abilities
Excellent Sheep
Why people who succeeded at every stage go blank the moment the standards stop. What they never practised.
What actually happened?
Deresiewicz taught at Yale for ten years and sat on admissions. What he saw was young people extraordinarily good at clearing set hurdles — grades, competitions, internships, the CV — and unable to say what they wanted. They were superb at clearing hurdles and could not tell you where they were going. His typical scene: an outstanding student who has no idea why she chose the subject, only that she had to be best at it. He insists this isn't a personal failing. Someone optimised since childhood to meet every standard has never once practised deciding what matters.
The two abilities don't substitute
'Be the best at this' and 'decide what's worth doing' are different skills. The first is drilled constantly inside any evaluation system. The second can only be trained where there is no correct answer — so the smoother the run, the likelier the second is blank.
The drop from star student to lost graduate usually isn't about ability. It's the first time nobody set the standard.
Never having failed makes failure unimaginable
The price of an unbroken run is no experience of failing, so failure gets imagined as catastrophic. The result is avoiding anything you might not be good at, and a range that narrows year by year.
Not switching to the thing you actually want because 'I've built up experience here.' The real reason is being a beginner again.
The target is the system, not the students
The book reads easily as blaming young people for lacking independence. The author's subject is the filtering machinery that trains them this way — every step rational, and the sum a life with no direction.
Fine for self-examination, useless as a lecture. Who set the hurdles and who benefits is the real question.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you know exactly what counts as doing well, and can't answer what you want.
Ask first: is this choice what I want, or is it simply the next hurdle? When did I last do something with no standard attached?
Where it goes wrong: using it to write off effort and achievement. The problem isn't being excellent. It's only being excellent.
Lines to keep
Superb at clearing hurdles, and unable to say where they were going.
Never allowed to fail, you imagine failure as unsurvivable.
Every step rational, and the sum is a life with no direction.