A few years ago I heard a story of an interesting examination that took place. The exam consisted of just one question, and that was, "What is confidence?"
An intriguing question for anyone under test conditions.
Most people who sat that exam rapidly started to write down as much information as they could in the allotted time. However, one student was different from the rest, and did something quite unexpected. While everybody was busy writing down pages and pages of information, this one student calmly wrote down just two words. Underneath the question, "What is confidence?" he just wrote, "This is, " and then left the rest of the page totally blank.
In effect, he was saying, "I'm so confident I'm going to pass, I'm not even going to write out an essay. That's how confident I am. Perhaps as the examiners read those two small words on that very large piece of paper, there was a curious smile at first, followed immediately by the inevitable second smile - the realisation they had come face to face with someone they would have to pass.
Ever since my brother first told me that story I've never succeeded in coming up with a more perfect answer to that question. Certainly, I've tried.
No comments:
Post a Comment