It’s Never Too Late for Success
佚名 / Anonymous
You and your parents can stop worrying — Pasteur， Edison， Darwin and lots more were far from being geniuses in their teens.
History books seldom mention it， but the truth is that many of our greatest figures were practically “beatniks” when they were teenagers. They were given to daydreaming， indecision， hebetude (plain dullness)， and they showed no promise of being doctor， lawyer or Indian chiefs.
So young men and women， if you suffer from the same symptoms， don’t despair. The world was built by men and women whose parents worried that they would “never amount to a hill of beans”. You don’t hear too much about their early failure because parents prefer to cite more inspiring examples.
So it goes. You have the Wright brothers， who were brilliant at engineering in their early teens， and you have Thomas Alva Edison， whose teacher tried to get him out of the class because his brain was addled. You have the Nobel Prize physicist Enrico Fermi， who at 17 had read enough mathematics to qualify for a doctor’s degree. And you have the great Albert Schweitzer， who wavered between music and the church until he was 30. Then he started his medical studies.
Charles Darwin’s early life was a mess. He hated school， and his father once shouted： “You care for nothing but shooting dogs and rat catching， and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family！” He was sent to Glasgow to study medicine， but he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. He was sent to divinity school and barely managed to graduate. Where upon he chucked the whole business and shipped to the South Seas on the famous exploring ship — Beagle. On that voyage， one of history’s greatest scientists was born. It was here that he collected the material for the book that would revolutionized biological science — The Origin of the Species.
And added to all the aforementioned paradoxes you have a small army of child prodigies who were graduated from college when they were 15， and are now obscure clerks in accounting departments. And you have a small army of men who were too stupid or indolent to get into or finish college and who are today presidents of the firms that hire the prodigies.