By Mark McCormack A visit to an Ivy League college to attend the graduation of his son bore an unexpected dividend for one of our agents. He was so taken by one of the speakers, a mathematics professor, that he approached him afterward about doing a book. It was an excellent example of maximizing the yield on one's time, and I told him so.
"Yes, but there's more," he said. "Listen to how this professor grades his final exam."
It seems that the professor had grown concerned several years ago by a tendency toward excessive caution displayed by students in his classes. Many of the students, even top ones, wouldn't risk approaching a problem on the blackboard without a set solution in mind. "If they didn't already know how it would turn out, they didn't want to try," he said.