Blog post 2: Synthesis

“The Matthew Effect” Synthesis

One competitive and goal orientated thing I have done in is playing  soccer.  Some people have advantages over others because they are more experienced, and bigger than other kids.  Other people have lots of practice with the game.  But, I believe that some advantages can be gained through hard work and dedication.
After reading “The Matthew Effect,” My response has only gotten stronger.  In this part, part one, the book talks about how older kids get more opportunities than younger ones.  In schools, the older kids are picked for advanced classes because the teacher thinks they are ahead of the class.  In reality, the older kids brains have had more life experiences than the younger kids.  This is just like my example because the more experienced you have of a subject, the better you are at the subject.  So if you play guitar everyday for 5 years and someone else players every other day for 3 years, you will have more experience and will have more opportunities.
The author of this book, Gladwell, thinks that people will have advantages in life that get them farther in their career.  This advantage these people have is simply being older and more experienced at doing something.  I would have to agree with Gladwell because sports generally pick the more experienced kids over the others. Gladwell used a list of Canadian hockey players and test scores.  These sources are very convincing because the the research about test scores was from economist research and the list of Canadian Hockey players was from a hockey game in Canada.  This brings my synthesis to a close.