Reading Reflection No. 3

1.     For this final reading reflection, I chose to read “Elon Musk,” a biography by Ashlee Vance. I thought this would be a great book to parallel with the one I read first about Steve Jobs, as people have coined Musk as Jobs’ predecessor of sorts. After reading the novel, I was surprised most that Musk’s dream is to colonize Mars. What I admire most about Musk is his drive – he moved from South Africa to Canada with nearly no money or job/schooling experience, then went to college to become an engineer, moved to Silicon Valley and started buying businesses just to recreate them. I least admire Musk’s sense of self grandeur, as he considers himself a genius and often does not-so-genius things (such as renting castles and sumo wrestlers for his parties, while hiring a knife thrower to throw a knife between a blindfolded Musk’s legs). As a young man, Musk faced adversity by not having much schooling and working blue collar jobs, just to gain the credentials to attend the ivy league University of Pennsylvania.

2.     There’s no doubt that Elon Musk is extremely competent. After founding Tesla Motors and SpaceX, he’s made serious headway in space exploration and is now considered a competitor of NASA. He’s educated himself a lot of the way by reading Soviet-era rocket manuals and has an insane work ethic. He failed over and over again with SpaceX and had several near-bankruptcies. One coworker commented that when they worked 20-hour days, Musk worked 23 hours.

3.     When the author interviewed Musk, Musk often discussed the technological aspects of SpaceX and Tesla. He talks with much intricacy and since I’m not familiar with any engineering terms, it was hard to follow along sometimes.

4.     If I could ask Musk two questions, one would be if he regrets smoking weed on national broadcasting, and the other would ask him how many hours of sleep he gets each night. I’d ask these questions because Musk definitely discredited himself with Joe Rogan and made audiences question his character. He also sounds like he doesn’t get any sleep, so that could be why he’s kind of crazy.

5.     Musk and Jobs are similar in the fact that they’re both perfectionists, and their idea of hard work is when something is built perfectly and looks how they want. I don’t share this same opinion of hard work, because as long as someone tried they’re best and failed a few times, it’s still hard work.