Fury-Driven Reverse Logic at Crossroads

“Having “outsmarted myself” like that—if it were me now, I might just laugh it off, accept it, and without another word still go to Ford. But the young, hot-blooded me became furious from embarrassment. And in that fury, I began to “think in reverse.” I was confident about the work at Ford, but was I unwilling to take a risk and go to Sylvania to do something I wasn’t confident about? I thought I got along very well with the supervisor at Ford, but judging only from the personnel manager’s coldness, how unreliable was that fleeting impression! I thought Ford was large and my career would be secure, but semiconductor development might be fast and perhaps would give me more opportunities to grow. Turning it over again and again for a few days while the humiliation was still fresh, I actually arrived at a conclusion that would have been impossible a few days earlier: go to Sylvania!”

“Although Chinese people believed that in America the only way forward was teaching and research, who said I could not be a pioneer and blaze another trail? After rejecting transferring to another school for a PhD, the remaining choice—for me the only choice—was: to find a job.”