Some little girls dream of being Miss America. I want to be a MacArthur Genius.

The 2010 MacArthur Geniuses have been announced! Looking for your name? Yeah, I'm not on the list either. Oh well, the Nobel prizes are announced in October, so maybe it will be a good year for me yet.

My crushing, yet unsurprised, disappointment aside, I avidly await the announcement of the MacArthur geniuses every year. The mix of people who are awarded the grant ($500,000!) and their wildly divergent fields is inspiring. A stone carver? An astrophysicist? A sign language linguist? An entomologist? Yep, all geniuses. Can you imagine being Jessie Little Doe Baird, who has been working to preserve and restore the Wampanoag (or Wôpanâak) language and getting the phone call saying, "Hey, we've been paying attention to all of your work. You are a genius."  

I may not be an internationally acknolwedged genius (yet), but I have an idea. I think K-State needs a genius program. We'd have to scale back the award money a little. Otherwise, we could follow the guidelines for a MacArthur Fellowship (that's the formal name, but genius is more fun to say). There are three criteria:

"exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work."

The best part is that geniuses don't have to apply--they are nominated. If you've ever had to apply for a scholarship, grant, or anything else, you know how fantastic it would be not to have to apply.  So, who wants to help me get this going?

 

Comments

[Phil Kvasnica]

Hi Sara,
So, are you talking about John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind" (one of my favorite movies)? I vote for more intelligence at KSU, and more creativity, and I think a genius fellowship would be fun, and might even put us on the map,(with MIT, etc.) so to speak. I'm "almost there" myself, whatever "genius" is. Let's talk.
Phil Kvasnica
KSU Arch. Engg.

[Rhonna]

Sara, It has been my experience that you are a book selection genius. I'm going to nominate you for next year.

[anon]

Here is a problem that you can solve, and doing so will guarantee you a genius grant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem

Known as the "P vs NP" problem, it basically asks whether or not "P" and "NP" are different. As a librarian, you know that "NP" comes before "P". So you should have no problem showing that they are different. You may have also noticed in the article that solving this problem will also earn you a cool million dollars.

You're welcome.