Friday, June 20, 2008

Are You a 2?

Jimmy John’s is an interesting restaurant. I’m not such a big fan of their sandwiches, but the place is very “alive.” Everywhere you look, you can see posters, quotes, interesting historic pictures, etc etc.

At the UIC-area location, a poster of famous quotes from Dave Berry lays on the right-side wall. One of them I find particularly humorous and truthful. It goes something like “Regardless of race, religion, age, or sex, we are all unified by the same confidence that we are above average drivers.”

People, and I guess Americans in particular, are very over-confident in there ability (especially their driving abilities). Unfortunately, these unrealistically high expectations typically lead to a lot of disappointment as we realize our limits. Thankfully, we don’t all realize those limits in public, and, thankfully, most of us are “good enough” drivers.

I like to think I keep a realistic view of my abilities. So, at the beginning of this semester, when our finance teacher handed out a survey, I marked myself down as a “2” on a scale of 1-5 when asked about my driving ability.

I wonder how many other people answered that way?

At the end of the semester, the finance teacher went over the survey results. Of all the guys, half said they were 5s. Another half said they were 4s.

And then the teacher picked up his head up, looked calmly at the class, and slowly said “and some boy said he was a 2.”

Interesting, ey?

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