Don T Eat Fortune's Cookie Summary

The speech “Don’t Eat Fortune’s Cookie” was given on June 3, 2012 by Michael Lewis. The speech was given for the graduating class of 2012. In his address, Lewis challenged the graduates to realize the role that luck has played in their lives and their success, and to never lose sight of how their lives have been shaped by arbitrary luck.
In his speech, Michael Lewis said that when he graduated, he did not know what to do and felt that he was no one to the world outside of Princeton University. Michael Lewis even said, “At that moment I was sure of only one thing: I was of no possible economic value to the outside world.” Lewis wanted the class to understand how big of a role luck plays in careers and everyday life. Lewis told the class, “I

want you to understand just how mysterious careers can be, before you go out and have one yourself.” Lewis did not even know what he wanted to do for a career after he graduated. So Lewis decided to go to graduate school. He was later invited to a dinner with a very important person from a Wall Street investment bank, called Salomon Brothers, and his wife. The big shot’s wife basically forced her husband to give Lewis the job. But Lewis did not know the first thing about money and investing. Lewis now found something he could write about, Salomon Brothers. The book that Lewis wrote about this incident and Salomon Brothers was called Liar’s Poker. Millions of copies were sold and Lewis was becoming a known writer. Lewis even said, “All of a sudden people were telling me I was born to be a writer. This was absurd. Even I could see there was another, truer narrative, with luck as its theme. What were the odds of being seated at that dinner next to that Salomon Brothers lady? Of landing inside the best Wall Street firm from which to write the story of an age?” Lewis thought that he was not a born writer and more or less had the luck of getting the job to write the book. “My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People don’t always like to hear success explained away as luck- especially successful people” said Lewis.
In the last part of the speech, Lewis talks about researchers in the Cal psychology department held an experiment where students were chosen as the participants.

The students were split into groups of three, segregated by sex, with three men, or three women, per team. Each team was arbitrarily assigned a group leader and exactly 30 minutes later, the researchers interrupted each group. The researchers brought each group a plate of cookies, with four cookies on each plate. Everyone got one cookie but there was still one cookie left on the plate and every time, the group leader felt that they deserved it since they were the leader, but their status was nothing but luck. When Lewis was talking about this, he said, “With incredible consistency the person arbitrarily appointed leader of the group grabbed the fourth cookie, and ate it Not only ate it, but ate it with gusto: lips smacking, mouth open, drool at the corners of their mouths.” Lewis wants the class to understand that they have all had an incident with this extra cookie and will have many more incidents, but when it happens, they should not take it, or at least act like they don’t deserve it because of the role luck has in our success. To support this, Lewis says, “All of you have been faced with the extra cookie. All of you will be faced with many more of them. In time you will find it easy to assume that you deserve the extra cookie. For all I know, you may. But you’ll be happier, and the world will be better off, if

you at least pretend that you don’t.”
Lewis orders his speech in good way, where he talks first about his personal life stories about how he obtained success, fame, and fortune.

He then talks about how the students will be faced with a situation where they feel they deserve something, but they might not deserve it because they have not considered the fact that their success could be all luck. If Lewis would have started out with talking about how all the students have had luck and then gone to his life, students might not of understood how luck played a big role in his life and how it will play a big role in their lives.
Lewis had drawn the graduates in with his tone and style of delivery. The tone of his address was very motivating and dynamic. Lewis delivers his speech in a way where he is always moving his arms around and being excited. If he was not moving around and looking excited, students might have lost interest in what he was saying, causing them to not pay attention and not hear important life lessons. But since Lewis was moving around, the graduates payed attention and learned the lessons that Lewis was trying to teach

them.
One thing that I learned from his speech and I hope everyone else learns, is that you need to look back at all they success you have had and really think about it. Is it actually success, or is it arbitrarily luck? Even though there are a lot of good points in his speech, one thing that could be altered would be the time. Shortening the speech would allow people to focus better. The longer the speech, the less people pay attention to you.
In my opinion, I feel that everyone should either watch this speech or at least listen to it. The speech can make you realize, that maybe you have not been successful and instead your success is luck. But maybe you have been successful. It also shows you not to be greedy when you think you deserve something because maybe you don’t deserve it and that is another reason why everyone should listen to this speech. If you do not watch this speech, you may miss out on an important life lesson.