"The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step."
-- Lao-Tzu

told that they stink at stuff? 

Check out this list:

• Albert Einstein was four years old before he could speak.  They may have thought he was a bit dim, but he was probably just thinking!
   
• As a boy, Thomas Edison was told by his teachers that he was too stupid to learn anything.
   
• Werner von Braun, one of our most important rocket scientists from 1930 to 1970, flunked ninth grade Algebra.  Do you KNOW how much algebra you need to know to do rocket science?  Dang!
   
• Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade.
   
• Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college.
   
• Louis Pasteur was rated mediocre in chemistry when he attended the Royal College.  He went on to discover that “germs” are the cause of disease, prompting hospitals to start sanitizing things.  He also invented milk pasteurization and discovered a cure for rabies.
   
• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he had "no good ideas."
   
• Gwendolyn Sykes, the Chief Financial Officer of NASA, failed Algebra!  Now, she’s in charge of the finances for one of the biggest companies around.
   
• Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinkos, was labeled as “retarded” in elementary school.  He isn’t, of course.  He’s just dyslexic.
   
• Robert Kiyosaki, author of the all-time best selling personal finance book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” failed English twice in high school.
   
• And me!  I wouldn’t exactly put myself on the same list as the people above (haha), but I failed Prealgebra (a couple of times) and now I’m a semi-famous math geek who is making a living by teaching math to millions.

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