Ramit Sethi calls it the shrug effect: assuming someone's success came from obvious advantages like their school, while missing the deliberate steps they actually took. Bethany came from a weak high school but got into elite universities and law school through test prep, counselor help, and sustained effort. Success looks like luck from the outside.
One thing that I think is really cool is that someone, you know, someone watching this through my side or anywhere else, you know, it's easy to look at you and say, well, Betney. Well, she's. She went to Yale, so of course she got into Harvard. Or she did this, so of course she got into Yale. And I've written about this. I call it the shrug effect. And it's where we look at like a Fortune 500 CEO and we say, well, of course he makes this much money. He went to Harvard. Well, guess what? That guy who went to Harvard started a paper route when he was 13, when his friends, you know, were sitting around looking at whatever they were looking at at 13. So, like, at each step of the way that you've been telling me, it's like you have gone above and beyond what regular people are doing and you've really, like, made yourself look extraordinary and yet. And then so someone would look at you just on the surface and say, well, like, oh, she's. She got a 179 or LSAT. Well, whatever. I could never do that. Well, guess What? You took 23 goddamn practice tests. Yeah, right. No, I mean, I think what's interesting about that is that I went to a school called College park, which is not a very academically rigorous school at all. They don't send people to Ivy League scholars, Ivy League colleges very often. I think about 50% of kids go to a four year college at all. I think we lost about 25% of my class. They didn't graduate from high school. And I did not really come from an area, you know, I didn't have a. I had a fantastic college counselor. We were kind of learning everything together. It wasn't as if she was like, here's what you do to get in. It's kind of like, here's what I think I need to do to get in. Can you help me with this? And so it did kind of involve taking those initial steps. It was in no way inevitable. You know, if you had said when I was 13, you know, Bethany's gonna end up at Yale, people would have said, huh, well, maybe. But it was in no way inevitable. Yeah, and I don't intend this at all to kind of like puff up at all. I just think it's cool that you have taken systematic steps at each turn, like in high school and college and now going to law school, that have, like, clearly paid off really well. And by the way, you don't seem stressed out. You don't feel guilty about anything, you know, it's. It's just like. Oh, it's a matter of course, as a matter of fact.
