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adviser—a professor at Stanford’s medical

school—invited a group of students

to her house. Mike hoped to make a

good impression, but he couldn’t think

of anything to say. The other students

seemed to have no problem joking

around and asking intelligent questions.

“Mike, you were so loud today,” the

professor teased him when finally he

said good-bye. “You just blew me

away.” He left her house feeling bad

about himself. “People who don’t talk

are seen as weak or lacking,” he concluded

ruefully.

To be sure, these feelings were not

totally new to Mike. He’d experienced

glimmers of them back in high school.

Cupertino may have an almost Confucian

ethic of quiet, study, and

relationship-honoring, but it’s subject

to the mores of the Extrovert Ideal all

the same. At the local shopping center

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