Late gratification

Sitting in Professor Price's lecture on emotional intelligence, I wondered how intertwined we, engineers, are with this aspect. When he specifically mentioned late gratification, there was a sense of relief as I said to myself, "I'm not the only one." Putting it in very simple terms, late gratification is less work less reward, more work more reward, usually later in time. This may seem at first a simple choice. However, when faced with multitudes of mental, physical, and emotional labor, our basic human instincts may guide us easily to the lesser work done.

This aspect of life was prevalent through even younger stages of my life. While going to the rigors of studying 2 years of economics and intense higher level math in IB, I saw how concepts of demand and supply and abstract algebra were amalgamated with late gratification. Even at my own personal level, studying intensely the 'right' way, rose my level to a stage where I gained confidence and came out better than the rest.

The key to all of this is the 'right way'. There will always be an easy way out, a detour of some sort. We hear and say it all the same, "... or you could just go to spark notes", or "here take my paper, just change the words", or " increase the period size and change the font, I gained half a page that way." I'm not saying I'm completely innocent of these ways or that they are life altering, but there is a reason why something is the way it is. There is a reason why my English teacher wanted us to read 14 books instead of the regular 11. There is a reason why my math teacher would give us long exacting projects during the summers. And there is a reason why iFoundry is not for credit hours or merits. The ultimate reason is to grow your mind, make you critical thinkers, better human being, and more knowledgeable. By detouring, this reason is abandoned and is left untouched. The problem is this reason, this reward is abstract, its vague as there is no concrete way to measure it. The real question is Can you get over yourself to choose the right way, for I know it is not easy.

A subtext here is what I mentioned before, late gratification is an aspect of life. Engineers are probably more inclined to choose the road less traveled upon, however all people in all fields go through this situation. The people who make a difference are those who opt for late gratification.