Just about every life concept we learned in schools are wrong. from exam strategy (scan and answer the easiest question first) to classroom behaviour (sit and keep quiet like everybody else); from student evaluations (6B is better than 2A and 4E) to teaching method (follows what teacher said is always right); from attitude shaping (mistakes are bad and quiting is worse) to financial senses (study hard get a good job and you’ll be rich).

Everything just seems not so right at school.

Don’t believe me? try to look around. do you care if American Idol Carrie Underwood got an ‘E’ for her history? do you care much if NBA stars Kevin Garnett cant do piano? what if I Capital Biz icon Tan Teng Boo failed Biology in his SPM, will you stop buying ICAP stocks? guess the answers are of course ‘NO’. now, who face more failure thru out his life - Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein or you? who currently makes more money - a Harvard fall-out Bill Gates or a PHD title holder from Harvard?

While the school train us to be average (do as what others doing), our community rewards those who’re willing to be different. you gotta be the ‘best’ in something, you gotta stand out from the rest in certain field - as Seth said ‘taste like chicken’ wasn’t a compliments and being average is just too risky to be.

Reading ‘The Dip’ gave me the quite same feeling when i first read ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’. while ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ talks about money, Seth Godin’s ‘The Dip’ talks about being the best of the world and quiting. the book’s kind of easy to be read - it’s short, it’s printed in large font size (unlike The World is Flat!) and it’s languauge is easy to be understood. however, the book’s not for those who can’t accept new ideas. as said, it’s against every little thing we learned about life in school. a book talks about quitting - if this’s not revolutional, what is?

So hey, if you wanna find out why being the best of the world matters so much; why quitting sometime is the best strategy? when should we quit; what makes quiting a smart choice; what’s a dip and what’s a cua da sac; go read Seth Godin’s The Dip.

P/S: Seth Godin do runs a little blog about the book here but it’s rather quiet over there as he rarely update it now.