Instead of working in my office this week, 5 km from my home, I've been
travelling almost every day to different branches of my company. On Monday I
was in Tel Aviv, Tuesday Haifa bay, Wednesday Carmiel and Thursday Tel Aviv
again. Some of my fellow workers wondered whether I was healthy, as they
haven't seen me for several days.
Every day I travelled by train; I've been getting to recognise many of my
fellow travellers. Of course, I don't know their names, but I often assign
them nicknames, not necessarily complimentary. I wonder if they notice me
and whether they have assigned me a nickname too (that sour looking bloke
who's started travelling every day instead of once a week).
The book starts with an analysis of junior Canadian ice hockey players;
Gladwell points out that one stands a much better chance of being picked for
a junior hockey team and then be trained if one is born in the first three
months of the year (Jan-Mar). When comparing eight year old children, there
is a big physical difference between an eight years and eleven months old
child as opposed to an eight years and one month old child.
I was such a child who theoretically suffered from being born in the wrong
month. My birthday is in August, and the British school year started (maybe
still does) in September, so I was always one of the youngest children in my
class. I certainly don't remember any problems about this whilst in junior
school (upto age 11), but then we didn't have competitive sports there. The
problem was recognised at my grammar school: during the winter and spring
terms, when we played rugby, everyone was classified as under-12 (this was
the first year). But when the summer term arrived and we played cricket,
suddenly most of the children were in the under-13 age group whereas I was
still in the under-12s. There wasn't an under-12s cricket team (as there
were so few of us), but I did take part in an swimming competition as an
under-12 with few competitors. The following year, we were all under-13s,
but when the cricket season arrived, again most children were now under-14s
whereas I was still under-13 and played with children in their first year.
Thus theoretically I was compensated for having been born in August.
Academically, all of the above was irrelevant. As it happened, 40% of the
students skipped a year between what would have been their second and fifth
years (ie we took our 0-levels after four years whereas 60% of the students
took their 0-levels after five years). As a result, when I was in the 6th
form, I was with students who were nearly two years older than me; I
remember that in my final year, one of the boys in my class used to drive a
car to school, whereas I had barely cleared my sixteenth birthday.
I also left school at sixteen, albeit at sixteen and ten or eleven months.
The uncertainty arises because it's not clear exactly when I finished
school; during the final term we had A-level exams, which meant that we had
no lessons and were at home revising. To complicate matters, my parents
moved from Bristol to Cardiff before I finished the exams, so once I had to
catch the train from Cardiff to Bristol in order to "sit" an exam (if I
remember correctly, it was a practical exam in Chemistry, so no one sat). I
know that I came to the 'final assembly', which would have been in July
1973, but again I came on the train and I did not come in school uniform.
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