While I was scrolling through my Instagram feed like any typical high school girl, I ran into a very intriguing topic: The Apollo Syndrome. The Apollo Syndrome was a phenomenon founded by Dr. Meredith Belbin in 1981.

The phenomenon reported that a group of high achieving, brilliant-minded, and sharp individuals will most likely perform poorly in a collaborative project.

The Apollo Syndrome implied that instead of having too many dominant, intelligent individuals working on one assignment together, it is best to have a team of diverse intellectual capacities as well as capabilities to result in success. This study made me wonder if this pertained to any everyday activities I engaged in, and the study proved to be relevant to my life.

I remember back in my freshman year, I had a science group project where collaboration was essential. My group consisted of five individuals, in which two individuals were top-scoring, bright students. Throughout the project, our team had faced many difficulties because of the two dominant students who were unable to agree on one particular idea.
We��ve wasted a lot of time on trying to settle on a topic just because the two students had such domineering personalities and the other teammates, including myself, felt very uncomfortable in handling such a situation.

The project��s results? As the Apollo syndrome proposed, not too successful.

Another time the Apollo syndrome proved to be relevant to my life was when I was put in a group project to solve a difficult mathematical problem. Taking the most rigorous math classes that our school offers, the group and I had only thought of the complicated techniques and formulas that we believed would have helped us in solving the problem.
The group struggled to find an answer and couldn��t figure out why we couldn��t come to a problem. However, when a new freshman who was taking a lower math class suggested a simple formula that we didn��t even consider using, we were able to get to the answer in a matter of seconds. The Apollo syndrome��s implication of a diverse team having more success applied to this incident as well.

With this study relating to more of my life, I started implying this to the larger community. I started wondering, why does the world have its eyes set on America? The answer: diversity. I realized that America is seen as successful in the eyes of those nations who don��t have diversity. Perhaps, it��s true since America is a successful, first world country. In fact, my immigrant parents say, ��America is successful because of its diversity.��

America has a lot of academically brilliant individuals, but there are also many who are bright in other areas. This diversity, I believe, is what allowed America to become a proof of the Apollo syndrome. ��I��m not an expert of [Apollo syndrome],�� says Rachel Lilies, a middle school student, ��but I think that it��s true��.

<Yery Eva Joo/ South High School 12th Grade>