How does Outliers connect to MY life?

     In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, it talks about many different topics such as how the month someone is born in affects their maturity. It talks about how the year someone was born in can allow them new options, like Bill Joy. It talks about plane crashes, and the power-distance index of people. It talks about rice paddies and a few other things. As completely random and sometimes unrelated these things seem, a few of the topics connect to my life.
     In the first chapter of the book Malcolm Gladwell talks about how the month you are born in can affect your education. He talks about how "parents with a child born at the end of the calendar year often think about holding their child back before the start of kindergarten."(pg. 28). I have a younger brother that is named Caden, who just turned five on December 20th. My mom had decided she would have him go to school next, and I was find with it at first. But since I read the book I found out that whatever disadvantages a kid has in kindergarten doesn't go away. "The small disadvantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists."(pg. 28). I don't my brother should have a disadvantage just because he's born near the end of the year. But, if my mom had decided to put him in school this year then "the teachers are confusing maturity with ablility," so that the older kids born earliest are put in advanced classes (pg. 29). Since Caden was born in December, he likely wouldn't be chosen since he is less mature than a kid that was born in, say, January. I think that we should be more like Denmark because they "have a national policy where they have no ability grouping until the age of ten (pg. 29)." That way, decisions are made after the "maturity differences by age have evened out," (pg. 29). And maybe, we could test out Malcolm Gladwell's idea to divide the kids into groups so they have equal chances of doing "advanced" things.
     In the second chapter of the book it talks about how a man named K. Anders Ericsson, who was a psychologist, did research on violinists. He divided the students into three groups: Stars, people that were good, and "students who were unlikely to ever play professionally and who intended to be music teachers in the public school system," (pg. 38). All three of the groups were asked how many hours they had practiced. By the time they were twenty, the stars "had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice," (pg. 39). The students that were just good "had totaled eight thousand hours, and the future music teachers had totaled just over four thousand hours," (pg. 39). The study showed that "once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works," (pg. 39). It has been found that ten thousand hours is the "magical number for true expertise," (pg. 40). Since I want to become better at things like writing and dance I have to practice at it more until I have practiced and worked at it enough to have enough hours to be equal to at least the lowest group of violinists. It also helped me figure out that the key to becoming skilled at anything is to practice.
     In chapter seven, the book talks about "Power Distance Index", which is "concerned with attitudes to hierarchy, specifically with how much a particular culture values and respects authority," (pg. 204-205). The book also talks a little bit about the United States. Since America has a lower PDI (number fifteen out of nineteen), that means they are less intimidated by authority and are more likely to show disagreement with their boss or manager. This connects to me because I live in the United States, and I think that it's comforting to know that people in America are able to openly disagree with someone that has a higher status or is in the position of being in control. I am also glad to live in the United States because the book states that "our ability to suceed at what we do is powerfully bound up with where we're from," and because sometimes places that have a high-power distance culture can have speech barriers since they have high respect for authority and could only hint and make suggestions in the hopes that their boss, or whoever is higher than that person, would pick up on those suggestions and listen to them (pg. 209).
    Overall, the book suprised me with how many connections to my life I could find. I think this book has taught me quite a few things that will be helpful to know.