Let me tell you a funny, yet true, story. My schooling years started off in some school that did not offer almost anything good to its students: whether it be the level of education, or the maturity or noblety of people went there, or lawfulness of the administrative and educational processes that took place. This was before I changed this school and decided to go to vastly and imcomparably better one, which was TDV-BTL. As I already said, most of the students who went to this joke of a school didn’t even seem to be there for getting education. Many of them were immature and poorly educated. At that school, I was considered to be one of the smartest students. In certain sense, it was hard to be smart and devote yourself to your education in such a badly managed environment, but in another sense, it was easy to be the best among the worst, frankly speaking. Going back to the vastly better school, which was TDV, I became a student there after passing their internal examination. At the time, TDV had a “double-class” structure, which meant that each class were divided into 2 (sub-)classes; for example, instead of having a single $9^\text{th}$ grade with Group-1 specialization and a single $10^\text{th}$ grade with Group-1 specialization, there were two $9^\text{th}$ grades (9A and 9F) and two $10^\text{th}$ grades (10A and 10F). The A classes had students with higher entrance scores than those of students of the F classes. Based on my score, I was put as the first highest-scoring student in the F class. Once again, I was the best of the worst… Obviously, I use the word “worst” in a certain context here, not trying to demean anyone in any bad way; not to mention that grades mean nothing in the big picture of how things evolve.

After I graduated from the school, I applied to study computer science at UFAZ, a double-degree university. They had an internal examination for the selection process, and long story short: I had the highest score, which was literally one less than the score that would allow me to study wihout paying annual university fees. I went to study the foundation year in another field, which was free of annual fees and then got transferred to the CS faculty at UFAZ with an exemption from annual university fees due to my good performance on the foundation year, which was appreciated by a person1 in charge at that time. Anyway, once again, I got the best consequence of the worst situation! There were other times similar things happened to me after I graduated from UFAZ with a computer science degree, but I won’t bother going through each one of them. The point is not about my stories alone: the point is actually something bigger than any of this in some sense. So, what IS the point?!

The point is: you don’t actually want to stay as “the best of the worst” longer than needed; you want to be the best of the worst so that you can transition to being “the worst of the best” later on. Progress in life doesn’t come from being at where you are for your entire life. It comes from moving from being the best among the worst to being the worst among the best, over and over again.

It is like the drawing above: the worst of the worst $\rightarrow$ the best of the worst $\rightarrow$ the worst of the best $\rightarrow$ the best of the best. One thing is that the progress is probably felt the strongest when you make a transitioning from being the worst of the best to being the worst of the best. While it is tempting to even think about being the best of the best, you may find life more intriguing when you decide to be the worst of the best at a different area outside your expertise. It is often harder to go as below as the worst of the worst once you are playing in the league of the best players, but going to being the best of the worst is somewhat easier even though you are now in the league of the worst.

The life will hit you with many ironies from time to time. All you should do at those moments is to smile at the irony and work your way through it somehow. You will know it is time to move one step up when it feels like you are the best of the worst. You do not want to stay there for a long time. The right place for most of the people is the place where they are considered the worst of the best. Even being the best of the best may not be as sustainable as being at one of the two steps before it. If you reach to the point where you are considered to be the best of the best, then you should probably not be too afraid to jump to another stairs, you know, for the fun of it.

  1. Charlotte Payen had a significant impact on my life, and she died due to cancer after a few years. ↩