Lerner S. - Kids who think outside the box (2005)(en)

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hard look at who I was perceived to be, who I really was, and who I really wanted to be.

This struggle took place not only intellectually, but psychologically. Ultimately, it forged a great transformation within me. I had to recognize my deficiencies and be totally critical —neither overestimating my weaknesses nor devaluing my strength. Film was my passion. I finally realized that. It helped make me who I am today, an Asian woman, sitting in the chair of the Graduate Film department at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Yeah, I’ve come a long way, baby. If I could address my colleagues and students and my future with just a simple phrase, I’d say, “be loyal to your friends and family, be loyal to your art.”

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■John Westermann

Writer

ohn Westermann’s career has been shaped by a life of de- Jtours. His father, a lawyer who grew up on Manhattan’s Park Avenue and rose to become Chief Executive Officer of the defense contractor Hazeltine Corp., had wanted his son to follow in his footsteps at Columbia University, but John wanted to attend Princeton University. In the end, he went to Trinity College in Hartford, where he did not do well. In fact, he ranked 312 in a class of 314. After his third year, Westermann simply couldn’t convince his father that it was worthwhile sending him for a fourth year.

He returned to Long Island, married his high school sweetheart, and moved into uncharted territory. He became a bartender, then a security guard, and finally a village cop. “Besides being a cop, I was the son of a CEO, brother of a lawyer, brother of a doctor—a really privileged childhood,” Westermann said. “I sort of failed my way to the police department.” He never rose beyond the rank of patrolman, even though he placed first three times in the civil service sergeant’s exam. He attributes this to the apparent disapproval of Long Island Republican politicians. “Not getting promoted spurred me to start writing,” he said. “I was caught in a civil service trap. . . .

I was going to suck it up and stay. Then I began taking notes.” He started with articles for a Freeport weekly, then The Blotter, a local police publication. Eventually, he thought about converting his police experiences into fiction. He schooled himself by reading how-to books on writing fiction, and after nine years, 11 rewrites, and countless rejections, sold his first

novel, High Crimes, to Soho Press in 1988.

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John Westermann

Never Quit

Work on your weaknesses. Learn to go left.

hile my high school mates got their diplomas, I got a Wsecurity job during the daylight hours and a bartending job at night, and I grumbled and moaned while I waited to join a police department. I flunked out of college after three years of lacrosse and football, and returned to Long Island a failure.

But now, I’m a retired police officer and the author of five crime novels, one of which, Exit Wounds, was made into a hit movie starring Steven Segall and DMX. Sounds cool, but before Exit Wounds was a movie, or even a book, it was eleven drafts over eight years, on a manual typewriter. Before that it was a street cop’s dream. The security job meant days in a booth at the edge of a huge parking lot, killing eight hours, reading the piles of paperback mysteries under the counter. I knocked off maybe two hundred crime novels that year before I was called to the police academy. Turned out to be a useful senior year, where I was headed. One cop I worked with told me he had never read a whole book. He didn’t understand how I would have the audacity to think I could write one.

Five years later, as a cop, I covered a sad and gruesome homicide. I drove home from work and wrote about it, and discovered I liked writing—the fixing and pruning of sentences, sifting for best word, the image that transports, the performance aspect of the process. Dialogue, I love writing dialogue. Plotting, I detest, a defect not faced that cost me years. (Take-home lesson: Work on your weaknesses. Learn

Source: Printed with permission from John Westermann.

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to go left.) And don’t quit, ever. Eight years with no outward signs of success and endless stationhouse criticism preceded the phone call from the agent that led to the book that led to the movie. I might have quit a month too soon and never known how close I came. Talk about an exit wound. Yikes. If you love the work, you are doing what you should be doing. So don’t quit. Chin up. You are ahead of the game. Things can only improve with practice.

THE LEADERS

■Robert D. Hormats

Economist, Financier, Ambassador

hether serving the public or private sector, Robert WHormats’ expertise in international affairs, business, and finance is unparalleled. He is Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs (International) and Managing Director of Goldman, Sachs & Co. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1982 after serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs from 1981 to 1982, Ambassador and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative from 1979 to 1981, and as Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs at the Department of State from 1977 to 1979.

He served as a senior staff member for International Economic Affairs on the National Security Council from 1969 to 1977, during which time he was senior economic adviser to Dr. Henry Kissinger, General Brent Scowcroft, and Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. These global experiences at a relatively young age helped shape the life he was going to live, the mission he was going to pursue, and the professional road he was going to travel. Over the years, he has developed a reputation as one of the world’s top investment bankers, and as a man who has a quick grasp on any international issue and is willing to run with it.

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Robert D. Hormats

Run Your Own Race

In life, the challenge and the thrill is not to succeed at easy things —it is to succeed at difficult things.

ne lesson I learned early on is that no one is good at Oeverything. If you become unhappy because someone in a room or in your class or in your group of friends is smarter than you, better looking than you, richer than you, or has cooler clothes than you, you are bound to be unhappy all of your life because inevitably someone will be smarter, richer, etc. Each of us has some exceptional talent—some of us are good at one thing and not another, some excel at kindness to others and human empathy, some at sports, some at math, some at selling, and some at managing others. Develop your best talents and do not dwell on what you are not good at. And do not become distracted by people who try to bring you down or make you feel inferior just because you cannot do precisely what they can do. Eleanor Roosevelt put it well, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” So don’t consent to it.

A good analogy is that of a thoroughbred racehorse; the horse is fitted with blinders so that it cannot see the horses on either side, so that it is not distracted by them and therefore focuses on running its own race. Run your own race.

I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore, first attending a private school through eighth grade, then moving to a public high school that offered advanced courses in language, science, and history. I attended Tufts University, majoring in economics and political science, and then stayed

Source: Printed with permission from Robert D. Hormats.

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on to do graduate work at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

As an undergraduate, I spent one very special summer on a project called Operation Crossroads Africa—a three-month Peace Corps type experience—building fences and barns in rural Kenya. It was my first trip abroad. For a kid from a southern city, it was eye opening to live in a dramatically different society—ethnically and economically. Happily for me, I had previously had at least a limited exposure to kids from other countries—at the age of 10 my parents had sent me to a wonderful summer camp in the Poconos, run by a lovely Quaker family who recruited the children of UN diplomats and councilors from around the world.

Helped by my African experience, I was selected during my first year in graduate school to be a summer intern in the African Affairs Bureau of the State Department. The next year, I was selected to be a summer intern in the U.S. Embassy in Bonn, Germany—where my study of German in high school proved invaluable. It was during the Cold War—and I was intrigued by visits to West and East Berlin, then divided by the Wall.

Toward the end of my last year in graduate school, I was asked to join the economic staff of Dr. Henry Kissinger; he had been recently selected as National Security Advisor to the newly elected President Nixon. An earlier graduate of the Fletcher School, Fred Bergsten, headed the three-person economic staff. Of the three, I was the most junior. Later I moved to the State Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, and then became Deputy U.S. Trade Representative and then Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs. In 1982 I left to join Goldman Sachs in New York, where I am now Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs (International) and a Managing Director.

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In looking back over my career, several important moments stand out. One night in college I was struggling with a tough math problem on a take-home exam; my inclination after about an hour of fruitless effort was to conclude that it could not be done—and throw the paper out of the window. Then I decided that of course it could be done—that this problem was in the test precisely to pose a challenge far greater than the other problems. If it were easy everyone could get it. It was there precisely because it was supposed to be difficult. I was determined to do it—and with a change in attitude I succeeded in getting it done and turned out to be one of just two in the class who did. The conclusion I came to was that in life, the challenge and the thrill is not to succeed at easy things—it is to succeed at difficult things.

Later, in reflecting on my experience working with Dr. Kissinger, I was struck by the same phenomenon—the thrill of working for him was that he demanded far more of his very young staff than we ever thought we could do. And that experience led most of us to accomplish more in that job and then later in life than we ever could have imagined.

Louis Pasteur, the great French scientist, spoke of the “prepared mind.” Read, learn, and experience as much as you can. We do not always know which piece of knowledge, bit of information, or experience will be valuable to us tomorrow or next week or next year. When we least expect it, something we have heard or learned or experienced can make all the difference. Success is about building on experiences. Few people achieve instant success—even if it sometimes appears that way. It requires a lot of work and training to be a great musician, doctor, artist, or scientist. Sir Isaac Newton was not the first person to see an apple drop from a tree, yet when he saw it, it opened a whole new science because his mind was prepared by years of experience and study; the insight enabled

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him to understand the force of gravity. Preparing your mind— in school, through reading, through your life’s experience— will enable you to do great things later on.

Recognize that the essence of life is people. Treat others as you would like to be treated. As one very wise person once said to me, “If you can’t be anything else, be nice,” a simple but lovely concept. One way I often judge the character of others is whether they are as respectful and kind to a waiter or a taxi driver as they are to their boss or someone in authority.

Because life is about people, it is important to make good friends throughout your life, but almost invariably, those friends you make in your earlier years are the best and truest ones—the ones you can rely on not only when things are great but also when things are not so good. Friends can be great in your career, helping you to find a job, helping you to make changes in your life when you are not satisfied with what you are doing, helping you to get back on track if you have a problem.

The time I spent in Africa—where many people live in small villages—showed me a part of our early culture that we sometimes miss. If we go back far enough, we all come from small bands or tribes. Our ancestors all lived in small villages —in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and throughout America—wherever we came from. People looked after one another and cared about one another and helped with schoolwork and farm work. We don’t live like that in America anymore, but the basic concepts of reinforcing and reaffirming ties of family and friendship are important.

Finally, one thing stands out from my time in Washington. I saw a president destroyed by lies he himself fashioned with a small coterie of staff. The night President Nixon resigned, a very wise senator reflected over dinner: If you leave Washington with one thing, he said, it should be with a reputation for integrity. If you lose that you have nothing. There are enor-

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mous temptations to cut corners, to try to deceive others in order to achieve a certain objective, to succeed at the expense or others or by putting others down, but in the end if you lose your integrity, the chances are others will know and will think less of you for it—and even if they don’t know it, you will think less of yourself.

For each of you the sky is the limit. Your parents and your teachers can give you wings—but it is up to you to soar on your own—and there is not a single one of you who can’t.