I met and talked to THE Tom Christensen tonight

I couldn't believe Tom Christensen (senior US State Dept official, over the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific, who handles Us-China affairs; on sabbatical from being a Princeton professor in IR) was coming to my office to talk, and I had a seat at the table. My boss' boss, Admiral McDevitt, accompanied Tom. All around the people were people I knew--various generals, professors--and I, this nobody, had a seat at the table.

He gives a personable and interesting talk on China's bilateral relations with the US and its overall global interests, etc. The normal stuff.

He looks over at my coworker and mentions that he had my coworker in a class before. Though my coworker just came to our office away from a tenured professorship at the Univ of Wisconsin, I assumed Tom meant he was teaching my coworker. While we were standing there waiting to talk to Tom after the talk, I ask my coworker what it was like to have Tom as a professor. He response, "we were both students, I used to look over Tom's papers for him." Funny and unexpected.

Tom finishes up stiff conversation with a bunch of USN flag officers, turns to my coworker and instantly loosens up. I could tell that they used to be good friends.

Tom finishes talking to my coworker and turns to me. All I had to say was "my sister's at Woodrow Wilson, she's graduating this year and she's sad that she didn't have an opportunity to take one of your classes..."

He says, "yeah, they let me teach there, but they wouldn't have accepted me as a student," he jokes. Self deprecating humor, always good to see in a higher official.

This is where the interesting insight starts:

Later, while my coworker and I were walking to our cars, I say to him, "so, what was Tom like as a student? Were you really impressed?"

He turns to me and says the opposite of what I expected, "No, man, Tom was far from brilliant. The thing is, when I look back, the brilliant people didn't really get anywhere. It's about getting things done. There was one guy who was brilliant but now over at the job in .... (blah blah blah examples of his brilliant but underwhelming friends). They start something and never finish it. It's about finishing. The impressive people I know were not brilliant. Tom was a huge partier."

I would supplement his insight by saying that people skills matter, truly caring for (and loving) people matters, who you know matters, hard work matters, etc. But point taken that being brilliant is not the end all, and that average people can ironically do better. Esp good for me bec I'm not that brilliant.

I always wished that I could be brilliant like the Jenns or Lisas of the world. Maybe I can be the Randts or Christensens instead.