Rendall's "Freak Factor" provides the audience with a few rods on how to take their weaknesses and embrace them, and use them to their advantage and turn it into something positive. He tells us that our flaws, the things that make us freaks, are also what can make us successful if we take the right approach. After reading it though, there were three specific suggestions on how to do this that stuck out to me the most:
Point 2--Whats My Problem?
A lot of publications and speakers tell us how we can minimize our weaknesses or turn those weaknesses into strengths. Here, Rendall says that people don’t necessarily have to overcome their supposed weaknesses. He says that he found out that his “apparent flaws were clues to my true strengths”. Creating a list of your “flaws” can cause you to find lifestyles and career choices that won’t make you unsuccessful. Applying this idea to everyone’s life can reveal paths that would’ve otherwise gone unnoticed. For example, I love working in groups, and collaborate well with others and their ideas to make one good final product, so I chose a career path that will help me be creative and also work to my advantage because the media industry relies heavily on teamwork and group production.
Point 4--Forget It: Don’t try to Fix Your Weaknesses
This takes the stance that one should not try and fix their weaknesses, but rather understand that they have limitations. I think that this is an important thing to understand, especially to college students and especially to media students, when we seem to think that we can take on the world. The truth is that we all have limitations and driving too hard to overcome these will lead to issues elsewhere in life. Media is a group-oriented career. It is important to find someone who can compliment you. I am generally a lazy person, pushing things to the last minute, so when I am paired in a group with a go-getter type of person, someone that will push me to get something done by the deadline, I can apply my talents to the project, and at the same time get my stuff done on time. It isn't a matter of me "fixing" myself, it's a matter of finding my place and finding people who can compliment me and draw results from me.
Point 6--Focus: You can't do both
What this piece of advice is saying is be great at something rather than be mediocre at multiple things. He uses WalMart, K Mart and Target to create a very good example for what he means. This piece of advice stuck out in particular to me than all the others. I think that most decisions we make everyday in the world generally come down to this. A perfect example is coming to college, and why I chose mine. We pick a major, which should be what we think we want to pursue a life-long career with. It is not ignoring everything else, it is just an emphasis on what we have to offer the world. The reason this applies to me in particular is because of how I came to be a Digital Media Major. I combined three of my best talents, which were a) being technical savvy and being able to work well with computers, b) my love and talent for art and drawing, and c) my love for videogames and movies (animated and real). When I begin to look for internships and jobs, I am going to have to tell them my passion and talent for all these aspects and how I combined them to become talented in one cohesive aspect of the multimedia industry.
As for my own strengths and weaknesses, their are a few. My weaknesses are for one, I need inspiration for my ideas and creative projects. I am not so good at coming up with an idea randomly and right off-the-bat. Another one of my weaknesses is also that I take my time too much, if thats possible haha. I take too long on tests, projects, pretty much anything u can think of. So sometimes I go over the deadline of things, which is not a very good habit. My strengths, as previously mentioned, are being technical savvy, my talent and love for drawing and art in general, and also my passion for the creation and final results of movies and video-games. I combined all three of those three main strengths and my passion for all three in order to pursue a career in which I will never not love what i'm doing, no matter how tedious and long the work is. If its something I love and am good at, I will do great.
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