Excellent Sheep Book Summary

The commonly perceived idea is that an elite b school in India will create elite leaders. But, the reality is far away from this. They might produce the highest number of successful businessman and leaders but they aren't the perfect fit for the job and certainly, they aren't the happiest. There are various ideas which are being discussed in this book and in this post I'm going to summarise them and present the crux of this book in front of you. 

Excellent Sheep Key Idea #1: Students in elite colleges are beset with psychological problems and graduate feeling aimless. However glamourous college life may look from outside, studies have found that there is a mental crisis on the campus. This is very much true for elite colleges who outwardly appear to be super people, managing huge workloads and maintaining the aura of happiness. The stress of their studies might not be so bad if students were pursuing their dreams. But many aren’t. In fact, students at elite universities feel forced into pursuing careers in areas like consulting or finance as a way to gain recognition from their peers.

Excellent Sheep Key Idea #2: “Tiger parents” overidentify with and infantilize teenagers, robbing them of creativity. We all have at some point come across parents who try to force things on their children. Although their intentions arent wrong but that often kill their children's creativity and make them suffer. Tiger parents inadvertently cause their children to lose the ability to express their own creativity through their interests and desires.

Excellent Sheep Key Idea #3: Today’s elite colleges are run more like companies than like educational institutions. Elite institutions today are more concerned with “placements” and revenue rather than with crafting genuine knowledge. While it might be hard to argue against making education “efficient,” at large elite academic institutions, “efficiency” has less to do with education and imparting ideas and more to do with revenue-generating research.

Excellent Sheep Key Idea #4: The most important thing students should be learning at college is how to think. Obviously, we all will receive a degree at the end of our college, but surely there are many more things. Critical Thinking is an important skill which is imparted to us at college, which us help us develop a habit of sceptical reflection and the aptitude to put the specific knowledge and skills which we have learnt into practice.

Excellent Sheep Key Idea #5: Introspection will help you find the career path that’s right for you. Introspection and self-reflection will help us realise what we truly aspire to be and moving in that direction will not only give us happiness but also we can reach great heights in our chosen field.

The lesson which I've learnt from this book is that we should do what we want to do and not what others tell us to do. We all know this but it is seldom we do this. In some way or other our parents, family, a friend often influences what we study. The short-term pain of a disappointed family cannot be compared to the lifetime of anguish caused by locking ourself into a path that we find unfulfilling.