BOWTIE STATISTICS BY JOE CONJERTI
I wore a pink bowtie to the Career Fair, bold move when everyone else was wearing neckties. I glanced in the mirror before leaving and just felt awkward. I looked like Rick Ross at the Grammy’s or a waiter at a five star in Boston. Ironically, later that day my bowtie landed me an interview at Spectranetics. The way I look at it, life is all about Bowtie Statistics.
Life is all about luck, honestly. The odds that you graduate college are 6/10. Okay, decent, but the odds that you get a job when you graduate are 5/10. That means that the odds that you graduate and getting a job are 3/10! And that’s the knot, the average that everyone is given to start. If you do the mediocre and float through, then you will have to rely on chance to get you where you need to go. But if you differentiate, put on a bowtie, and increase your odds, then you might just get lucky and surprise yourself.
Differentiating is easy but at the same time dangerous, meaning if you plan on stand out then you better do it whole heartedly. Wasting your time to stand out will leave a sour taste in the mouths of those you are trying to impress. Keep it up and you’ll lose your focus at the knot and slip out to the left side of your bow, feeling the seam at the dead end of the fabric. But on the other side of the bow is a continuous loop of potential and possibilities. Endless choices and new ideas and paths that you can choose to follow, you only need to stand out.
Just like wearing a bowtie to a career fair, differentiating yourself will feel awkward at first. It feels unnatural because it is; your goal is to veer from natural!
The more you separate yourself from everyone else, the more you will be recognized.