"Maybe we brought too many leaders," Maya said.
…
"Too many chiefs?" said John.
Frank shook his head. "That's not it."
"No? There are a lot of stars on board."
"The urge to excel and the urge to lead aren't the same. Sometimes I think they may be opposites."
…
"The shrinks saw the problem," Frank went on, "it was obvious enough even for them. They used the Harvard solution."
"The Harvard solution," John repeated, savoring the phrase.
"Long ago Harvard's administrators noticed that if they accepted only straight A high school students, and then gave out the whole range of grades to freshmen, a distressing number of them were getting unhappy at their Ds and Fs and messing up the Yard by blowing their brains out on it."
"Couldn't have that," John said.
…
"The trick to avoiding this unpleasantness, they found, was to accept a certain percentage of students who were used to getting mediocre grades, but had distinguished themselves in some other way — "
"Like having the nerve to apply to Harvard with mediocre grades?" " — used to the bottom of the grade curve, and happy just to be at Harvard at all."
…
"We don't have any mediocrities on this ship," John said. Frank looked dubious. "We do have a lot of smart scientists with no interest in running things. Many of them consider it boring. Administration, you know. They're glad to hand it over to people like us."
"Beta males," John said, mocking Frank and his interest in sociobiology. "Brilliant sheep."Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars
I remember 7th grade (first year in gifted program). Didn't blow my brains out on the yard, but I did cry. Not because of my dropping GPA, but the whole jungle atmosphere of the first few months (before the new hierarchy was formed, the cliques established, the outcasts identified, etc.) was tough on my unrealistic expectations of being accepted in the company of equals (turns out homogenous communities don't exists, a single ambitious person ruins them, but I didn't know that at eleven and a half). I dealt by growing thicker skin and developing my introversion into a full fledged reclusiveness (which lead to my spending an inordinate amount of time in front of a computer, which influenced my career choice).
I've seen it happen again in my advanced training - people who were used to being the best cracked under pressure. I was too busy (the sheer strain of complying with discipline took a toll on me the weight of which I did not completely realize under it was lifted and I virtually lifted off the ground) to do anything beyond just noticing (today I'm sorry for not doing informal interviews and taking notes), but after seeing it again I've thought of the similarities and suggested a theory explaining why a statistically improbable number of people from the same class get into the very exclusive military R&D training (site only in Hebrew, title quote is Daniel 1, 4): they are from various gifted children programs and have already dealt once with not being the smartest kids in the world. There probably are many kids from other schools who could've done very well in the program who are not chosen because of the high risk of them cracking if forced to deal with suddenly discovering they are not the smartest kids they know during basic training, which would be a shame.
Anyway, that's how I explain four of them being from my own class. I really should ask them about this “Harvard solution”, especially because while programmers' training is intended to produce professional workers and only a handful of administrators (i.e. commissioned officers), their program lists command qualities as a primary requirement (and includes combat officer’s training), so they shouldn't have any "brilliant sheep" making the situation a bit different.
