4 ms·

This phenomenon isn't limited to England. The one thing all Harvard undergrads learn (probably as much from one another as from the professors) is how to defen

by pg 16y ago

This phenomenon isn't limited to England. The one thing all Harvard undergrads learn (probably as much from one another as from the professors) is how to defend themselves in conversation. Some are smart, and some aren't, but by the time they graduate they all know how to sound smart.

ovi256 16y ago
I can vouch for it being present in France too. One of the best schools, Science Po Paris, has a widely known (in France) exam that used to be broadcasted on TV. It's called the "grand oral", all students are together in an amphithéâtre and they pass one by one on stage. Several professors are there with one declared purpose: to make them trip by whatever means short of screaming at them. A legendary exchange took place once, a student (obviously some future minister) was asked the depth of the Danube, and without missing a beat retorted "Under what bridge Sir ?" The point being, geography was surely not his subject, but he was supposed to be able to "talk through it".
bane 16y ago
A trait I've noticed when working with or arguing with the products of elite universities is the incessant ability to respond to most challenges in the form of a blank stare. Harvard grads in particular, but I've noticed it in some military officers as well. They won't get riled up, they won't back down, they won't...well...do anything in particular. While being incredibly infuriating, it also makes them nearly impossible to read or assess. Are they smart? Are they dolts? No idea! This enigma-like quality can get one very far in certain contexts. The ability to operate in elite positions, without becoming ruffled is a tremendously valuable skill. The downside of course is that if things really do go pear shaped, the normal response is to show some kind of stress reaction and hopefully buckle down and get to work. Not acting like there is anything in particular going on just makes those around you wonder if the ol' gears are actually turning at all. Are they out of touch? Do they care? It can be tremendously demotivating to those around. A company I worked for early in my carerr had to let two people with this trait go (both top-tier uni graduates) because the management didn't think they were taking a then current crisis seriously enough. We came to find that with both of them, they were effectively doing no work at all as there was almost no extra work that came out of their leaving. When asked why they were kept around for so many years, promoted etc., management simply responded that they seemed well poised, like they knew what was going on, attended tons of meetings, sent out lots of email...so it looked like they were burning furnaces of activity. When the crisis struck, they kept plodding along this track, scheduling meetings, refusing to let them run long, sending out dozens of emails a day, long after the rest of the team had changed behavior patterns to deal with the issue. It became such a nuisance, especially the content free, but tightly scheduled meetings, that they were finally put under higher scrutiny. It's a office-space-esque/dilbert-esque lesson I've kept with me through my career and have run into this trait dozens of times. I've personally found it so infuriating a trait to work with that I'm loath to hire people from certain majors in certain universities under the assumption there is some kind of communications coursework that teaches people to respond with this blank stare. I've coined the term "the management stare" for this phenomenon. On the other hand, the people who I've found to be top performers were consistently the dynamic, emotive people in an organization. They responded rapidly and naturally to changing conditions, showed outward emotions and got really emotionally involved in conversations, meetings and tasks. They brought an energy to the company that drove the rest of their peers along with them.
- nradov 16y ago
  I have consistently found the dynamic, emotive people to be disastrous in crisis situations. They tend to act rashly without thinking through the consequences and often make things worse. When faced with a technical problem I prefer dispassionate experts who can apply a discipled, scientific approach and never get flustered.
  - eropple 16y ago
    Depends on the crisis. For crises where you have a 'book' on the situation, dispassionate, by-the-numbers execution is important. For situations where you do not, somebody had better be ready to stand up and lead. Both approaches are valuable, but they do not address the same problems.
  - bane 16y ago
    I think I'm phrasing it wrong. I'm definitely not saying that people prone to histrionics are good performers, just people who show that they are concerned about the situation, have some leather in it, and want to fix it above all else seem to be the people that actually get it done the best. A rational approach to actually solving the problem is definitely best, I agree. A blank stare, followed by business as usual, is a non-starter in my opinion.
- zwischenzug 16y ago
  "I prefer to keep my mouth shut and let people think I'm a fool rather than open my mouth and prove it." Top advice.
retree 16y ago
I think the effect is more significant at Oxbridge though. At Oxbridge you have "supervisions" or "tutorials" as an undergrad. These consist of a 1-on-1 lesson with a fellow or grad student where you are questioned mercilessly on every section of your essay or problem set for an hour. They ask you about every single sentence or step in your solutions. You have to prepare carefully, and even then you have to learn to wing it, because they're going to find flaws you didn't know existed. Given that there is no-one else to back you up or interject with an answer, if you don't learn to wing it quickly, you're screwed. Oh, and most of this article about Oxbridge is complete crap. I'm working 10 hours a day for 6 days a week in order to prepare for my exams this term at Cambridge, and I'm one of the lighter workers (including English/Classics students). I've never been offered sherry (though I did get some wine at the end of last term), and the interview process is nothing like he described. It's bloody intense. I had 2 interviews and 2 tests in a day and felt like I didn't answer a single question correctly. As someone else mentioned, if prospective applicants take this article at face value they're in for a nasty shock.
- flipbrad 16y ago
  The author is right to skewer the particular targets of his essay in this way (the so-called Bullingdon set), but please don't take this as a skewer of the Oxbridge system itself, or you risk dramatically underestimating what it demands and delivers. I don't think that's what the author set out to do, and I think he perhaps does in fact colour the bullingdon set's experience of Oxford. I think he's particularly correct to attack how alien the British ruling elite is to scientific principles - uncertainty, testing, evidence, statistics, falsifiability. How fresh it would be to see politicians espouse such principles. This rejection is facilitated by their training in Classics, History or English Literature, and the ego boost one receives from Oxford when one is this particular type of person; typically, they'll be active in the Oxford Union, or be seen down at the Bridge club on a thursday night. However, don't extrapolate this to a 'normal' undergrad's experience at Oxford. I've never worked as hard in my life as for my MBiochem finals at Oxford - my law conversion is widely depicted as being intense, but didn't compare. If the author of that article truly believes oxford tutorials are about defence, he's getting shortchanged, or he's looking to them for exactly the same thing our ruling elite gets from them; either way, he's shortchanging his readers in giving voice to such a view. The true aim of a tutorial is not to spend an hour defending what you wrote two nights ago, it's about letting that stuff fall into the backdrop to a cutting edge discussion with a leading (often foreign) academic; not just getting a better picture of what the cutting edge is, but where it's likely to develop to and what could be investigated over the next few years so we can get there. In UK undergraduate education, my understanding is that this focus on developing questions and probing soft spots in knowledge, rather than just assembling and defending answers, is pretty radical. And it certainly seems to run contrary to a fair amount of the article's claims. Admittedly most of a tutorial's exchange of ideas flows to the student, but I rarely met a tutor who won't admit to having got something out of tutorials they have given, too.

by pg 16y ago

ovi256 16y ago

I can vouch for it being present in France too. One of the best schools, Science Po Paris, has a widely known (in France) exam that used to be broadcasted on TV. It's called the "grand oral", all students are together in an amphithéâtre and they pass one by one on stage. Several professors are there with one declared purpose: to make them trip by whatever means short of screaming at them. A legendary exchange took place once, a student (obviously some future minister) was asked the depth of the Danube, and without missing a beat retorted "Under what bridge Sir ?" The point being, geography was surely not his subject, but he was supposed to be able to "talk through it".

bane 16y ago

A trait I've noticed when working with or arguing with the products of elite universities is the incessant ability to respond to most challenges in the form of a blank stare. Harvard grads in particular, but I've noticed it in some military officers as well. They won't get riled up, they won't back down, they won't...well...do anything in particular. While being incredibly infuriating, it also makes them nearly impossible to read or assess. Are they smart? Are they dolts? No idea! This enigma-like quality can get one very far in certain contexts. The ability to operate in elite positions, without becoming ruffled is a tremendously valuable skill. The downside of course is that if things really do go pear shaped, the normal response is to show some kind of stress reaction and hopefully buckle down and get to work. Not acting like there is anything in particular going on just makes those around you wonder if the ol' gears are actually turning at all. Are they out of touch? Do they care? It can be tremendously demotivating to those around. A company I worked for early in my carerr had to let two people with this trait go (both top-tier uni graduates) because the management didn't think they were taking a then current crisis seriously enough. We came to find that with both of them, they were effectively doing no work at all as there was almost no extra work that came out of their leaving. When asked why they were kept around for so many years, promoted etc., management simply responded that they seemed well poised, like they knew what was going on, attended tons of meetings, sent out lots of email...so it looked like they were burning furnaces of activity. When the crisis struck, they kept plodding along this track, scheduling meetings, refusing to let them run long, sending out dozens of emails a day, long after the rest of the team had changed behavior patterns to deal with the issue. It became such a nuisance, especially the content free, but tightly scheduled meetings, that they were finally put under higher scrutiny. It's a office-space-esque/dilbert-esque lesson I've kept with me through my career and have run into this trait dozens of times. I've personally found it so infuriating a trait to work with that I'm loath to hire people from certain majors in certain universities under the assumption there is some kind of communications coursework that teaches people to respond with this blank stare. I've coined the term "the management stare" for this phenomenon. On the other hand, the people who I've found to be top performers were consistently the dynamic, emotive people in an organization. They responded rapidly and naturally to changing conditions, showed outward emotions and got really emotionally involved in conversations, meetings and tasks. They brought an energy to the company that drove the rest of their peers along with them.

nradov 16y ago
I have consistently found the dynamic, emotive people to be disastrous in crisis situations. They tend to act rashly without thinking through the consequences and often make things worse. When faced with a technical problem I prefer dispassionate experts who can apply a discipled, scientific approach and never get flustered.
- eropple 16y ago
  Depends on the crisis. For crises where you have a 'book' on the situation, dispassionate, by-the-numbers execution is important. For situations where you do not, somebody had better be ready to stand up and lead. Both approaches are valuable, but they do not address the same problems.
- bane 16y ago
  I think I'm phrasing it wrong. I'm definitely not saying that people prone to histrionics are good performers, just people who show that they are concerned about the situation, have some leather in it, and want to fix it above all else seem to be the people that actually get it done the best. A rational approach to actually solving the problem is definitely best, I agree. A blank stare, followed by business as usual, is a non-starter in my opinion.
zwischenzug 16y ago
"I prefer to keep my mouth shut and let people think I'm a fool rather than open my mouth and prove it." Top advice.

retree 16y ago

I think the effect is more significant at Oxbridge though. At Oxbridge you have "supervisions" or "tutorials" as an undergrad. These consist of a 1-on-1 lesson with a fellow or grad student where you are questioned mercilessly on every section of your essay or problem set for an hour. They ask you about every single sentence or step in your solutions. You have to prepare carefully, and even then you have to learn to wing it, because they're going to find flaws you didn't know existed. Given that there is no-one else to back you up or interject with an answer, if you don't learn to wing it quickly, you're screwed. Oh, and most of this article about Oxbridge is complete crap. I'm working 10 hours a day for 6 days a week in order to prepare for my exams this term at Cambridge, and I'm one of the lighter workers (including English/Classics students). I've never been offered sherry (though I did get some wine at the end of last term), and the interview process is nothing like he described. It's bloody intense. I had 2 interviews and 2 tests in a day and felt like I didn't answer a single question correctly. As someone else mentioned, if prospective applicants take this article at face value they're in for a nasty shock.

flipbrad 16y ago
The author is right to skewer the particular targets of his essay in this way (the so-called Bullingdon set), but please don't take this as a skewer of the Oxbridge system itself, or you risk dramatically underestimating what it demands and delivers. I don't think that's what the author set out to do, and I think he perhaps does in fact colour the bullingdon set's experience of Oxford. I think he's particularly correct to attack how alien the British ruling elite is to scientific principles - uncertainty, testing, evidence, statistics, falsifiability. How fresh it would be to see politicians espouse such principles. This rejection is facilitated by their training in Classics, History or English Literature, and the ego boost one receives from Oxford when one is this particular type of person; typically, they'll be active in the Oxford Union, or be seen down at the Bridge club on a thursday night. However, don't extrapolate this to a 'normal' undergrad's experience at Oxford. I've never worked as hard in my life as for my MBiochem finals at Oxford - my law conversion is widely depicted as being intense, but didn't compare. If the author of that article truly believes oxford tutorials are about defence, he's getting shortchanged, or he's looking to them for exactly the same thing our ruling elite gets from them; either way, he's shortchanging his readers in giving voice to such a view. The true aim of a tutorial is not to spend an hour defending what you wrote two nights ago, it's about letting that stuff fall into the backdrop to a cutting edge discussion with a leading (often foreign) academic; not just getting a better picture of what the cutting edge is, but where it's likely to develop to and what could be investigated over the next few years so we can get there. In UK undergraduate education, my understanding is that this focus on developing questions and probing soft spots in knowledge, rather than just assembling and defending answers, is pretty radical. And it certainly seems to run contrary to a fair amount of the article's claims. Admittedly most of a tutorial's exchange of ideas flows to the student, but I rarely met a tutor who won't admit to having got something out of tutorials they have given, too.