Reformulating Gentry's Law

As Luke pointed out, "Gentry's Law" lacks zing as a title. There is precedent, of course. Murphey's Laws leap to mind. But if I want this to ever spread and be quoted, I need to work on a more catchy title.

Also, the Law itself needs to be more elegant. The "for a long time" is important for the meaning, but it reduces the impact of the language. Perhaps I need to break into Gentry's Laws.

1. To be good at something, you must first be bad at it.
2. You will be bad at it for a long time.

Maybe.

Gentry's Law

I've always wanted to have my own "Law", like Murphey's Law or Occam's Razor or the Peter Principle. This is my bid, Gentry's Law:

To be good at something, you must first be bad at it for a long time.

My job matters

I was raised to think you should do stuff to help other people. Not be a martyr, exactly, but tithe 10% to the church, volunteer, etc. I don't belong to a church anymore, so I satisy part of the tithing obligation by giving regularly to some charities/non-profits. On the volunteer front, not so much.

I do think I give value to society by just being a decent, productive individual. I have a job that allows me to pay my bills, not be a burden on anyone financially, and in the course of my work help other people get things done that they need done. I work at an Internet service provider, so I do my small part to make the Internet function. I feel pretty good about that. Overall, I think the Internet is helping make the world a little better place. It's not a job like a teacher or doctor where you concretely know you helped make peoples' lives better each day, though.

I saw something today, though, that boosts my feeling of credibility. You might be aware that in the cutting edge of philanthropy in recent years has been spreading of microcredit programs. Now there is Kiva. It is an Inernet enabled, almost peer-to-peer approach to microcredit. You can go to their website and choose a business to give a microloan to. Supposedly you get progress reports via email, and in theory you get paid pack, without interest. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm excited about it.