According to Smith, the way to have a great career is to pinpoint our passion from among our interests and pursue it. The reason we are going to fail at achieving great careers is that we constantly make excuses for not pursuing our passions: great careers are just a matter of luck; geniuses pursue great careers but I am not a genius; people who pursue their passions are strange, obsessive, and weird and I am not those things - I am nice and normal person and nice and normal people don't have passion; I value human relationships more than career accomplishments; if I pursue my passion I won't make a lot of money. If we perpetually use our fears as a shield, he says, we will never achieve great careers. Instead, we will wake up one day in what Tharaud describes as a "what-is-life-really-about? stupor" and have to explain to our children, who have come to us to discuss their own passions, that "I had a dream once too, kid, but I was afraid to pursue it." By that point, it's too late.

Note on framing: I appreciate and wish to note Professor’s Smith’s framing in the lecture. He argues that we will not have a great career because we will find excuses not to pursue our passions. Using the word “excuse” already puts dissenters on the defensive, because it frames any critical response as an “excuse”. Given Professor Moglen’s commentary in class that framing should not be necessary for the most insightful analysis, I’d be curious to his response to the framing.