MIT
Class of 1961
Two
years ago, my class had our 50th Class Reunion. It coincided with
MIT celebrating its 150th birthday – quite an affair. Our class had
many luminaries, which I used as examples in my talk to MIT students on careers
and my observation on why some are successful and some not so. Let me be clear,
success is in the eyes of the behold. Many would consider themselves successful
if they had a productive career, raised a good family, have many friends and
retired peacefully. Shown below is a slide that I prepared on some of my
classmates.
The
first point I made was that grades or activities were not a good predictor of
“success”. ‘Of course most of us were
good students and many went on to get Ph.D.’s but many of above were not in the
top of the class. (How do I know because in 1961, our graduating yearbook
showed who made Dean’s List or not. John Reed was not even in the yearbook.) I
don’t have time to go into everyone on the list but I will tell the story of
William (Bill) Lenoir, the Astronaut. He was on the first operational flight of
the Space Shuttle Columbia and subsequently became the Associate Administrator
of NASA responsible for Space Flights. At one of our reunion, I asked Bill how
did he become an Astronaut. Aside from all the tests Bill was interviewed and
he told NASA about having a bad automobile accident while driving at 15
years old. NASA asked him on his reactions and whether he blacked out or not. He
did not and Bill believed that fact that he did not blacked out enabled him to
be accepted by NASA to be space qualified. Thus aside from education (he was a
top student and earned a Ph.D. at MIT), etc., Bill became an Astronaut because
of his physical characteristics. Sadly Bill passed away shortly after our
reunion, ironically from a bicycle accident.
So
what is my observation for the factors of success? They are summarized below:
I
think they are self-explanatory. Certainly Bill Lenoir’s “unique” physical
characteristic enabled him to become an Astronaut.
An
example of some one with unique interest and passion was Bernie Goldhirsh, who
studied mechanical engineering. I remembered Bernie as a talented engineer but
his passion was sailing. So his passion took him to start Sail magazine, which he
sold. With that money Bernie then started Inc. magazine, which focused on young startups and
entrepreneurship. There was no
competition as Inc grew as it was the only magazine covering this growing area in the 1990’s. Bernie finally sold Inc for $200M in 2000. His
success as a publisher is far from being a mechanical engineer.
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