I was an average student in school. Though I was surrounded by high achievers, and never questioned the importance of being extraordinary, I somehow never expected myself to rise to their levels. The most common remark I found in my annual report cards read something like this – “An obedient boy who can do better than average with more hard work.”
I knew I could not work any harder and rise above being average.
Anyways, I never had the credentials to get into the best college after school, there were no scholarships on offer for me, and no one in my family, including myself, expected me to become a star in life.
Life continued this way even when I got into doing my MBA, again from an average college in Mumbai. My first job profile was average too, and it paid an average salary that, in my father’s eyes, was below average.
Living in a costly city like Mumbai also meant I never had better than average savings for the first few years of my life, even though I was saving as much as possible.
More than twenty-five years have passed since I started considering myself as an average person with average capabilities and average ambitions in life. Somehow, being like this in the world where people are seeking alpha, keeps me happy and satisfied with myself.
It was sometime during late 1999 through early 2000, near the peak of the dot-com bubble, the legendary George Soros and his hedge-fund team were working on how to prepare for the inevitable sell-off in technology stocks.