Imagine you're a penguin. You've always been good at swimming. Since you were young, your parents have told you you're a helluva swimmer, and everyone tells you you should grow up and become a professional swimmer. You enjoy the praise, you see that you do indeed have the talent for it, and so early on you realize you want to become a pro swimmer.

So you go to school. Hold on- only one of the subjects you learn is swimming. Everything else is stuff you're not so good with, like climbing trees or digging tunnels. You march on, wondering what the point of it all is, because you know that these skills won't help you much in what you plan to do someday, which is to swim.

All this while, over the span of 10 years or so, you are told you are a mediocre student. You do well in swimming class but no matter how much effort you put in, you're not as good a tree climber as monkey. Your parents often shout at you to try harder, your school teachers get easily impatient with you or may even write you off, and your peers look down on you.

So you take the exams. There are maybe 6 subjects, only one or two of which you are good at. Some animals, like Monkey, are really good jack-of-all-traders. He scores well on pretty much everything. You don't do so hot, especially since the two subjects you score well in aren't really seen as being all that important. Not to others, anyway.

So the time has come where you finally get to pick what school you go to, and you can finally stop learning about all the silly stuff you're not good at like tree climbing and hole digging. You can finally enter Swimming school. However, you did not qualify. Why is that? Because Monkey likes swimming and thinks he's pretty good at it, so he entered swimming school. So did a whole bunch of other animals. There weren't enough places in swimming school, so thanks to your poor grades in subjects not relevant to swimming, you did not make the cut. You might be a faster swimmer than monkey and elephant combined, but they will get to study swimming and you won't.

So you enter a private swimming school. It's not nearly as recognised as the official swimming school, and a lot more expensive, but you've got no choice. You ace it. You study hard, you get great grades, and finally you feel like you can go forth and be the swimmer you always dreamed you'd become.

Unfortunately, you quickly realize that with your inferior degree in swimming, it's hard for you to find a job. You're a great swimmer, but you've still got a lot of work cut out for you to prove it. Your 20 year struggle continues and someday, if you truly are the best at what you do, you may finally earn the recognition you deserve. But tell me: should it really be this hard?