Day 5

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Don't Lose Hope

The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.
-Woodrow Wilson

Readout stories of famous persons. Their stories stress one of the most important lessons of all: Never ever give up.

Bill Gates' first business failed.

Yes, the richest person in the whole world couldn't make any money at first. Gates' first company, Traf-O-Data (a device which could read traffic tapes and process the data), failed miserably. When Gates and his partner, Paul Allen, tried to sell it, the product wouldn't even work. Gates and Allen didn't let that stop them from trying again though. Here's how Allen explained how the failure helped them: "Even though Traf-O-Data wasn’t a roaring success, it was seminal in preparing us to make Microsoft’s first product a couple of years later."  

 

Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was four years old.

Einstein didn't have the best childhood. In fact, many people thought he was just a dud. He never spoke for the first three years of his life, and throughout elementary school, many of his teachers thought he was lazy and wouldn't make anything of himself. He always received good marks, but his head was in the clouds, conjuring up abstract questions people couldn't understand. But he kept thinking and, well, he eventually developed the theory of relativity, which many of us still can't wrap our heads around.
 

Benjamin Franklin dropped out of school at age ten.

Franklin's parents could only afford to keep him in school until his tenth birthday. That didn't stop the great man from pursuing his education. He taught himself through voracious reading, and eventually went on to invent the lightning rod and bifocals. Oh, and he became one of America's Founding Fathers.
 

Thomas Edison failed 1,000 times before creating the lightbulb.

Although the exact number of tries has been debated, ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 attempts, it's safe to say Edison tried and failed a whole lot before he successfully created his beacon of light. His response to his repeated failures? “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

 

Steven Spielberg was rejected from USC, twice.

You read that right. One of the most prolific filmmakers of all time, the man who brought us "Shindler's List," "Jaws," "E.T." and "Jurassic Park" couldn't get into the film school of his choice. Maybe, just sometimes, education can be a little overrated. In the end, Spielberg would get the last laugh, when USC awarded him an honorary degree in 1994. Two years later, he became a trustee of the university.