Mistakes, Career plans and Copyrights

I’m back! and the vacation has done me good – I’ve got a break from essays and applications, and also did some thinking on Plan B career options.

I’m done with consulting, and the only reason I’m sticking on right now is ‘coz I dont want to complicate my career goals essay further. Think about the tail wagging the dog… Anyways that holds only till Dec’07, by when I’ll submit all my apps. So time is ripe to pump in reality into my life, and look afresh. This time I’ll not be working for people I dont have respect for – either intellectually or personally.

This week, I’m attacking the HBS essay set, and have started with the second essay:What have you learned from a mistake? I actually spent the whole of yesterday thinking about what to write here, and have shortlisted two mistakes - from a whole Pandora’s Box .

I wish they had asked for 3 mistakes and 1 accomplishment, I’d be more at home that way. Do they think people with X accomplishments make less than X/3 mistakes? Is there an HBR article with some research heuristic on this? My guess would be atleast 10X mistakes for every X accomplishments, on average, and possibly 100X for outliers like me. “Someone who’s never made a mistake, has never tried” (don’t know who I’m quoting here, but I hope there’re no copyright issues)