I'm not cyclical - or cynical (?) - about the experiences of those who have done something impressive or who have something interesting to say...
Years of attempting actual self-improvement do make one weary of hearing people praising themselves for doing stuff that isn't very profound or impressive. Sad to say, the experience of actually improving yourself by doing something difficult involves regular meetings with the realization that you aren't as smart as you thought you were, or as organized, or as persuasive, etc.
Constant struggling against your own carelessness, partial understanding of your field and the limits of your intelligence doesn't usually lead to this kind of half-smart undergraduate self-congratulation. Those who aren't struggling are either going to be rampaging, obvious successes, or are comfortable and smug exactly because they're not doing anything all that hard.
The original guy was resolving some problems in a team of devs at Accenture, not putting a man on the moon or sequencing the human genome for the first time or building Facebook or whatever.
Years of attempting actual self-improvement do make one weary of hearing people praising themselves for doing stuff that isn't very profound or impressive. Sad to say, the experience of actually improving yourself by doing something difficult involves regular meetings with the realization that you aren't as smart as you thought you were, or as organized, or as persuasive, etc.
Constant struggling against your own carelessness, partial understanding of your field and the limits of your intelligence doesn't usually lead to this kind of half-smart undergraduate self-congratulation. Those who aren't struggling are either going to be rampaging, obvious successes, or are comfortable and smug exactly because they're not doing anything all that hard.
The original guy was resolving some problems in a team of devs at Accenture, not putting a man on the moon or sequencing the human genome for the first time or building Facebook or whatever.