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My most recent single release - "My True North" - is now available on Bandcamp. Open my profile and click on "audio clip".

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Any "C" Students Out There?

The name of my blog was chosen thoughtfully. To reflect from the bell curve, by definition, one must be on the bell curve. If I thought of myself as someone exceptional (i.e. not on the bell curve), I would have chosen a different blog name. Maybe - " Looking At Others On The Bell Curve?"  I'm neither proud nor ashamed of being un-exceptional. As is often and sometimes annoyingly heard these days "it is what it is."

But, I did recently learn how unsettling it can be to someone who feels exceptional to be thought of as "average", that is, like me, to be on the bell curve. Using a 1-5 scale and greatly simplifying, being on the bell curve means not being the lowest (1) or highest (5) for a particular domain; a "3" on that scale represents average, kind of like getting a "C" in a class. Here's a short list demonstrating why I named my blog as I did:

a.) I believe I'm a "3" in physical attractiveness (this was the domain where I recently got in trouble with someone else).
b.) I know (empirically) I'm a "3" in general intelligence.
c.) In the U.S., I'm currently a "3" with respect to my economic station. There is a reason why the "middle" class is so named and is by far the largest - economics perfectly illustrate bell curve distribution with the broad center taking up the largest portion.

Using a 1-5 scale, where would you put yourself on a-c above? A much more ego-centric (if potentially unsettling for me) question: Do you agree with my assessment of myself for "a"? For any woman who would give me a "4" or above on that one, let's meet soon, provided my wife doesn't read this post.

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