Al once told his sister in a letter that he was nothing but a burden on his family. Al had hit bottom by the age of twenty-two. His parents, who were impoverished, could no longer support him. He needed a job but no one would hire him. In desperation, he appealed to an old school friend. A fella whose class notes he used to copy. This friend's father had government connections. A few days later, Al was being interviewed for a position at the Federal Patent Office.
Fred Haller was then director of the agency. He would conduct the interview personally. Heller informed the young man that he needed personnel capable of judging whether the request for a patent had any justification.
“What do you know about patents?” the director asked.
“Nothing,” Al replied. The director blinked a few times. Ordinarily, he would have terminated the interview then and there but yet there was something intriguing about this young man.
“Tell me about yourself?” the director asked. Al forced out a smile. What was there to tell really. He had been thrown out of high school at fifteen. With no high school diploma, the college was out of the question. He applied at a technical school but he flunked his first entrance exam so he went back to a high school that would take him. His original high school refused to readmit him. This time he graduated and was accepted at technical school but when prospective employers learned that he had cut classes chronically and passed exams only narrowly and treated professors irreverently, no one would hire him.
So here was Al asking for a job in the patent office for which he wasn’t qualified. Director Haller wasn’t certain about this young man. He heard all of the reasons why he shouldn’t hire Al. But what he really wanted to hear is all of the reasons why he should hire this young man. That interview continued for two hours and by the time it was over the director had come to this conclusion. Al was not stupid. He was simply a failure. If he were to ever stop failing and make something of himself he would be an amazing contributor to his community. He would need a large dose of self-confidence in order for that to occur. Director Haller decided to give Al a break and hire him in a probationary position as technical expert class III.
At twenty-two, Al stood at the brink of obscurity if it wasn’t for the job at the Swiss Federal Office of Intellectual Property. Inspired by his first success, he eventually learned to live up to his best. He became the groundbreaking genius that we know as Albert Einstein.
We all have the desire to keep our life neat and tidy. We create structures that keep stress and strain from creeping in. I do have to admit that I like playing it safe. Successful people, most times, walk a razor's edge of failure. In Albert Einstein’s case, he had failed so much that it took another individual getting to know him and giving him opportunities in order for him to realize his genius.
“We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that’s the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?” Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success.
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” Albert Einstein
Thanks for becoming our student's advocates of opportunity. Continue to look for ways to overcome our failures and to help our students persevere over theirs.
Rob