Critical Analysis

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Critical Analysis

“It’s not about you” is the article in which writer David brook particularly hit the idea of leading up to your dreams mantra and employs a theme targeting the system which leads young college graduates to search jobs and profession which distracts them due to this whole idea. As the article name suggests itself, exposing the young audience about the bitter reality of life that it is not about yourself but the way you perceives the problem in life makes you successful. Colleges and Universities create an environment that feeds the idea of diversity and individualism, while the key sets of skill required in the real world are different then what is the main idea of a college education. Due to this ideology, the un-satisfaction of the recent college graduate increases leading them to switch jobs in search of their ultimate dream which is nothing put a paradox which is the key idea of David Brooks.

David Brooks is a cultural and center-right political commentator of Canadian-born American origin who writes for the newspaper The New York Times. He also worked previously in Washington times as a film critic, a reporter and as an editor later for The Wall Street Journal. This article is written on 30th May 2011, in the New York Times, in which the idea of dreaming a profession is criticized.

Mostly Brooks sympathizes the idea of how the life of a college undergraduate is constantly under the microscope and how the previous generations are better than the new generation coming. According to Brooks most successful people gets success in their life because they find the problem first in their life and then somehow sort the answers to the questions. While it is difficult to understand his point is because life of college graduate in America which according to him is somehow determined by the teaching skill set that is induced in them is a deterministic way of seeing the life while mostly autonomy is given to the college student prior their admission to seek subjects of their own choosing.

Although on one occasion the Brook says that no one prepares them for the idea of the unstructured and open market that the college graduates are exposed to and on another hand sympathizes the idea of being them to be supervised and neglecting the view of openness. The idea of autonomy is used by the college setups is to prepare the mind of adults to the openness of the job market. If the job market would be somehow structured, then everybody would be defined to do a similar pattern of jobs which basically kills the idea of creativity and making new domains.

One assertion that writer made is that most successful people first find the problem and then went for the quest to find the solution. If we see particularly, this whole idea is developed and is directly linked with developing the right amount of skill sets to cater to the problem in hand. If a particular skill set is never developed then it would be too time-consuming to get to the solution. For example, if hammering a nail into the wall is done using a plier then it would consume much time and effort while finding the correct tool to solve the issue would be beneficial.

Another thing that Brook assert is that it is not in the plan of us what to become but problems lead us to the path we follow. This idea reflects the writer's idea of determinism, that we are forged by the looks of the world and have no free will of our own. It reflects the personal belief of the writer where he thinks that everyone took a path that is never created by their own desire but by the deterministic world that makes us choose what we want to become.

Finally, the idea presented by the Brook in the article is "The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself” summarizes the whole point of his self-belief. This quotation states explicitly that it is the idea of getting one-self dissolve in some task to get a real gist of life while creativity only can be achieved by pertaining to certain deterministic measures.