Roaming Eyes Predict Success

You may be interested in learning that the single definitive trait for identifying "our kids", and which I have been using for over ten years (long before ADD), is "watching their eyes". This is almost an unfailing rule for predicting success in Project Lab. Try it yourself. I have had lot of fun watching kid's eyes in restaurants. The hunters are the ones who are constantly looking up and down, to the left and to the right, not furtively as a thief might, but openly and inquisitively as they look at the light fixtures, the rollers on the chairs, the people going by, the fire fixtures in the ceiling the rug patterns and everything else that there is to look at. When asked what they were just looking at, they are usually totally unaware that they had been studying anything in particular, but, it was evident from their scrutinizing appearance that something was taking place.

This characteristic is every bit as strong in girls as it is in boys and when I get brave and go ask their parents if their kids are interested in science I have almost always gotten a strong "yes" and a questioning of what led me to think so. I have come to believe that this eye movement is a part of what Hartmann calls the "hunters global concentration". I have not met a single youth, who, when lacking this characteristic, was at all enthusiastic about science/technology. (There are of course always exceptions, I just haven't found them). I have noticed about as many girls who are unusually attentive to their surroundings as boys.

Hyperactivity in my book means that they wiggle in their chairs, pat their feet to unheard music, scratch imaginary itches and find other excuses for waving their arms around, etc. I feel quite sure that there is an extreme range of hyperactivity which I would certainly term a medical condition. I do not wish to include this fringe group in our discussions unless it is clear that we are talking about "out of control" people. By my definition, most of our successful kids were medium hyper-active....I am interested in helping those extraordinary, ordinary hunter-type kids reach their full potential and help them find the joy and excitement in science that I have had during my lifetime.

There are two extremes of engineers. At one extreme are the accountant brained engineers that have never had a creative thought in their lives. These are the crank turners of engineering and I believe are mostly populated by farmers. They live in a world of black and white where numbers add up only one way. At the other extreme are the creative engineers that dream up new products and literally change the way we live. These are the ones that I identify with and who I believe are some of the great hunters of all times. They live in, and they live for the full range of gray, and out of that rich environment they find the opportunities that others never even see. They are so few in number and are all so lost in their laboratories and workshops, that you may never have even met one. My goal in life is to find the right kids and introduce them to this magical environment who's existence they might otherwise never even suspect.