1 year ago
26
Everybody talks about the egos of Surgeons and even pilots. What no one seems to notice is that the actual edge lords and real narcissist are the Professors and those entrenched in Academia. The hierarchy is set such that they were at the top and we, the little minions were scurrying below doing their bid, hoping to curry some favor.
The feeling of helplessness is one that I have fought against with passion but have always felt like my life was out of my control until one of my friends introduced to this book: the 48 laws of power. It’s funny, because I have always been aware of it’s existence, the same way one is aware that the sky is blue. However, I had never felt the urge to read it. Particularly because I have always hated self help books in general. These books have always seemed to me like giant ego projects.
However, I decided to give this one a chance and in the short amount time I have begun reading this book, I made so much progress in my professional life. Just a week ago, the professor under whom I was doing my thesis for my master’s program actually knew my name. It wasn’t the cheesy nickname that he had given me…but my actual name.
I know I’m playing it safe but my favorite law has so far being about not outshining the master. In my zeal to assimilate as much information as I possible, I was unaware of how aggressively competitive I had become. I wanted to prove to anyone who would listen how much information I actually had. This character flaw wasn’t just throwing off my colleagues but my professors as well. It made me unlikeable on sight. This revelation about myself wasn’t an easy pill to swallow.
In fact, the whole book hasn’t been easy to digest. I had to come to terms with the fact that I had been stumbling around breaking these “sacred” laws left and right. It used to be very difficult to make friends with people in the same field as me but now, I had secured invites to several personal and family dinners with several colleagues.
It might seem dramatic but I think this book might have saved my life. I swear by it.