Getting angry can be the best way to get ahead

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/07/getting-angry-best-way-get-ahead

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How to keep the migrant spirit going when the instinct is to get cosy, I asked last week. All sorts of ways that people stay motivated to better themselves. Some are laudable, others less so. One presented itself this week: cussedness.

When I grew up, the taunt was that migrants had a chip on their shoulders. Usually it was the refuge of the scoundrel, electing attack as the best form as defence. But chips aren't all bad. Sometimes chips come in handy.

I was at the House of Commons last Thursday. Every year Diane Abbott MP hosts the London Schools and the Black Child awards, designed to recognise and encourage those who have excelled, often against terrible odds. There were high-flying students who had been forced to bury loved ones in the run-up to their exams; dogged clever types who achieved phenomenal results while coping with illness or family difficulties. They never make the papers, but then good news rarely makes the papers. In another life they would be used as a counterbalance to all the negative stuff we read about underachievement and halfwits making gang signs on YouTube. But this is the life we have.

A procession of people rose to hand out awards and advice, and quickly a theme emerged; we might call it the Sod You phenomenon. First, we saw Sir Trevor McDonald. He was on tape, revealing how he was motivated to rule the roost at ITN after rising to diplomatic editor, being taken to one side by a friendly type and being told he could expect to rise no further. "Sod you," Sir Trev might have said. Off he went to become the kingpin. There was Malorie Blackman, the children's laureate, whose teacher said she would never pass English language. "I'll show you, you old cow," was her reaction.

Abbott recounted the tale of the teacher who said she was wasting her time applying to Oxbridge. Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Prudential, told of the adviser who laughed at the idea that he might study at the elite Ecole Polytechnique in France.

When my probationary period was extended on my first local paper, I fought to be formally offered the job: but only so I could tell them to stick it. In the event I forgot, but that's not the point.

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