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I've got a question for you.

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Which of you was always top of the class?

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All your life, top of the class?

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Right.

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--Liar (Laughter)

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Well, in precisely 9 minutes and 30 seconds, 
I'm going to make you proud

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that you weren't always top of the class.

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(Applause)

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You're going to go home tonight 
and tell your partner, your children,

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your friends and relatives:

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"Hallelujah, thank God, I wasn't always top of my class!"

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In 2007, when I started blogging, I began studying
the lives of several people

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who were successful in their lives.

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And each of them was successful in their field,
each one succeeded in a different way.

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But there was one thing all these people shared,
just one thing

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which intrigued me, and this was the fact

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that these people, these characters --
none of them had been really successful at school.

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And some of them had even cut short their education

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and others didn't even make it to school

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for long periods of time.

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So this was a little worrying and frustrating for me
when I remembered

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all those years in which parents and teachers

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told us, you must work hard, you must get the best marks,

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you must be one of the best 
to get into the best higher education establishments

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and in the end, I note that the reality is this:

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all those who have been successful at the school of life

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were not necessarily those who were top of the class.

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So this meant we needed an answer to the following question:

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Why isn't it necessary to succeed at school in order to be successful in life?

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Or even: why is there no direct link between success at school

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and success in life?