Determinationis associated with one’s ability to overcome hard-
ship, and with a strong work ethic. Of his best student, a distin-
guished philosopher says, “The trajectory and the sheer will...and
good will with which she did all this, I really admire that immensely
... the fact that she overcame what I felt were actual weaknesses
[which] were strengths that neither she nor I, nor anyone else had
seen at the time, and that she ended up finding that there was a lot of
talent and ability there.”
Humilityor unpretentiousness is viewed as an added measure of
excellence, especially when coupled with superlative expertise. This
is expressed by a panelist who describes a winner of the ultra-selec-
tive Society of Fellows competition: “Without seeming like an old
pedant, he seemed to have the control of his area that only some-
body who’s worked for thirty years has. And without being either
overbearing or patronizing or boring, he just communicated an im-
mense amount of information, all of it articulate and structured at
the same time.” An anthropologist who served as a panelist for a dif-
ferent competition recalls an applicant who received funding despite
an overbearing self-presentation. The panelist had disliked the “re-
lentlessly self-promoting, arrogant tone of the proposal,” which he
equated with the applicant’s personal characteristics:
What troubled me was the performance aspect of it. He was going
to prove that everyone was wrong about their interpretation of
this [historical event], and he was going to make this, his idea of
truth, into the general[ly] accepted one...ButIcould take the
point, and it was certainly a brilliant piece of work, aside from his
own recognition of his own brilliance...AsmuchasIhateto
give anything to this guy, he deserves it, and that’s fine.A geographer also stresses morality when he describes his intellec-
tual hero: “Peter Wood...[is] a model person, very modest. I think
196 / Recognizing Various Kinds of Excellence