The Importance of Friends and Family

It's the holiday/new year's season so I bet a lot of you are thinking that i'm about to write some sappy post about how much I love my family and friends and how important their support over the last year has been....but no, no, no.  I'm going to take an entirely different approach to the importance of family and friends.  It's a social commentary on the advantages someone has purely based on the family they were born into.

YOU ARE WHO YOU HANG OUT WITH

I was recently having a conversation with a successful lawyer about his son who was recently accepted to Stanford.  I'm sure he's a bright student, finishing second in his high school class (i wasn't aware these statistics were released, but i wasn't going to question him) but what really interested me was his essay question answer.  He explained that his sons essay was a comparison of music lyrics to his life and how the lyrics either influenced or mirrored his life and I'm not going to lie, I was impressed.  I can guarantee you that my essay questions for undergrad were well inside the box.  I asked how his son thought of the idea and to my surprise, he admitted that it was his brother's idea.  And this is what made me think (to myself of course) IS WHY FAMILY AND FRIENDS ARE SO IMPORTANT.  The mere fact that he put himself, through his own accord or not, in contact with educated people helped him come up with a great idea, that probably helped him get into one of the premier universities in the country.

Let me explain...

Throughout life you are influenced by the people around you.  As a child your vocabulary is almost purely a function of what your parents say.  You are a sponge whether you like it or not and some people are more fortunate than others to be surrounded by educated and successful people.   But the advantages don't stop there.  How many times have you heard the saying, "it's not what you know, it's the people you know."  There's a lot of truth to that saying and it all shouldn't be looked upon negatively.    People attend college and graduate school to make connections and I have a number of friends that have helped other friends find jobs.  Should all of these people be judged negatively?  I THINK NOT!  There's a limit to how much these so called connections can do for you without you taking on the onus to present yourself in a proper, intelligent, and likable manner.  The door is opened a lot of the time because of these connections but you need to seize the day (carpe diem, if you will) and walk through the door.