I'm better than you

If you're like most people, there is someone who has provided such profound words of wisdom that you live by them today. For me, it was organic chemistry professor Laura Kiessling, who during class uttered those words that have stuck with me for 10 years:\n"You know, you guys need to be more arrogant."\nShe might have said that in jest, but she was right. There are just some disciplines in which you need to be completely full of yourself to be successful: law, business, medicine, journalism, athletics-but none more so than organic chemistry. From my experience, I have found the best organic chemistry students are always the cockiest. I have no explanation for it. It's just the way it is.\nHeeding Kiessling's advice, I managed to make it through the organic chemistry Ph.D. program at the University of Wisconsin. But I didn't realize I had truly made it until I became an instructor myself and received some insightful student comments from course evaluations such as: \n"He has a superiority complex."\n"My biggest problem with Chung is his arrogance."\n"Grow up and stop being such a conceited asshole!"\nSo it was official. I had become a legitimate organic chemist.\nAfter reading my most recent column on the decline of American scientists, a professor suggested I write a follow-up column offering some solutions. I had none at the time, but now realize I had the answer all along. We need to be more arrogant, and this especially applies to our intellectuals.\nDuring one episode of "Law & Order," a detective asked an egotistical research scientist why he chose his profession. He replied that people don't choose his profession for the money, but for the glory. That is, it's not just the love of science that drives the scientist, but the love of making discoveries and more importantly, receiving the accolades for those accomplishments. \nIn America today, we need more arrogance to give us that drive to be successful -- not just in science -- but in anything that requires ambition. We're too satisfied with being ordinary -- watching MTV, drinking beer, obsessing over sports results -- in essence, escaping reality and living through other people.\nI thought America was supposed to be based on competition, but more and more it seems our schools are discouraging excellence and rewarding mediocrity. Professors and teachers need to stop awarding "A's" to students just for working hard. Legislators should repeal laws like the Tennessee one which bans posting the names of honor roll students. We should instead ban all those soccer games that have no one keeping score and everyone getting a trophy. There needs to be competition so we, the extraordinarily brilliant and talented ones, can develop our justifiable feelings of superiority.\nDespite all the efforts to sissify the American school system, there is at least one place where arrogance is alive and well, and that is right here on the opinion page. We opinion writers relish in seeing our picture in the paper, and we all think we're funny or have something important to say. In reality, though, we're not that funny, and no one cares what we think. But it is those feelings of self-importance that will lead us on the path to greatness. As author Albert Bernstein said, "Though there is plenty of narcissism without greatness, there is no greatness without narcissism"