IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2016 - 5

a ssoc iate editor's vie w

Marcel Pelgrom

Passion

What is it that Steven Jobs, Thomas
Edison, and Vincent van Gogh all
have in common? You can call it professional addiction, maniacal obsession, zealous dedication, or just
passion. These men who changed
our history lived their professions
every minute of their existence.
Van Gogh produced 2,000 works
of art in his ten productive years. At
today's prices and that many paintings, his production would outperform most of the top-ten semiconductor companies. Edison filed over
1,000 patents, and his observation
"genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" clearly shows his working attitude. And if you want a
15-min introduction to passion,
watch the 2005 Stanford University commencement speech that
Steve Jobs gave.
Psychology professor Anders Ericsson recognizes this passionate
attitude. His work shows that talent
needs at least 10,000 hours of practice to stand a chance of becoming a
top player in a discipline. Whether it
is in music, sports, or engineering,
excellence is reached after many
hours of training and failure. The
Roman saying "Repetitio est mater
studiorum" (repetition is the mother
of study) is as important today as it
was two millennia ago.
Excellence and passion in a field
was, for many centuries, a pure necessity. In western European societies,
your descent from a peasant or merchant
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2015.2495793
Date of publication: 21 January 2016

family would determine your career,
unless you were very good at something valuable. If your passion and
your quality drew the attention of the
establishment, you could rise from a
village existence to the highest ranks
(such as Isaac Newton, for example).
Perhaps it was easier to be passionate back then, as there was not
as much distraction as there is
today. Back then, an education in a
monastery would exempt you of the
daily struggle for food and shelter

Perhaps it was easier
to be passionate back
then, as there was not
as much distraction as
there is today.

and allow to bring significant progress to literature, art, and science.
Today, a career path that is given
by birth is limited to a few monarchs.
The rest of us need to work for a living, raise children, pay mortgages, and
hopefully earn enough to save for a
far-away retirement. Where do we find
the 10,000 hours needed to become a
top professor or a technology leader?
Perspiration is banned from modern education: the general opinion of many believes that a pleasant and unstressed atmosphere at
school is required for our children.
That is quite in contrast with when
our grandparents went to school,
and they were drilled in multiplication tables and reciting literature

excerpts from memory. At the high
school level, the situation hardly differs. The term "drill," let alone discipline, is unknown to the 21st century hipsters. At the age of 18, they are
familiar with every aspect of their
virtual social lives, but don't ask
them what a logarithm is. Practicing
goniometric equations until they are
part of your neurons is considered
a punishment from olden days. This
generation misses the satisfaction
of solving an exercise like proving
that sin(18°) × cos(36°) = 1/4. Yet
these elementary mathematical and
physics abilities are fundamental
for thinking on a higher level, just
as being able to find the brake of
your car in a split second is a necessity for a good driver.
Leisure and pleasure activities have
become epidemic. In just a few decades, university study has changed
from studying with some fun to long
weekends glued together with some
boring classes. Professors get used to
students asking to postpone their exams because of their skiing holidays.
A typical bachelor's program of
study requires a fraction of 10,000
hours, and that time is split over
many different topics that, in the end,
do not really form passion. During a
Ph.D. program, students get an opportunity to show what level they can
reach in 10,000 hours. Only scientists
and technicians who are maximally
devoted to their field will contribute
to the progress of the world. The rest
of you are wasting your lives!

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

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