quiet-the-power-of-introverts-in-a-world-that-cant-stop-talking-susan-cain

Many students deliberately try to be
more outgoing than their parents, Mike
told me. “They think their parents are
too quiet and they try to overcompensate
by being flauntingly outgoing.”
Some of the parents have started to
shift their values too. “Asian parents
are starting to see that it doesn’t pay to
be quiet, so they encourage their kids
to take speech and debate,” Mike said.
“Our speech and debate program was
the second largest in California, to give
kids exposure to speaking loudly and
convincingly.”
Still, when I first met Mike in Cupertino,
his sense of himself and his values
was pretty much intact. He knew that
he wasn’t one of the Asian superstars—he
rated himself a 4 on a popularity
scale of 1 to 10—but seemed
comfortable in his own skin. “I’d rather
hang out with people whose
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