New Student Orientation Resource Book

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal - Henry Ford

Don't be afraid to fail.

You've failed many times, although you may not remember. You fell down the first time you tried to walk. You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim, didn't you?

Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot.

R. H. May failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.

English novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.

Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 time, but he also hit 714 home runs.

Don't worry about failure.

Worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try!

- A message as published in the Wall Street Journal by United Technologies Corporation, Hartford CT

CONSIDER THIS ...

•  After Fred Astair's first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933 said "Can't act! Slightly bald! Can dance a little!" Astair kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.
  
  
•  An expert said of Vince Lombardi: "He possesses minimal football knowledge. Lacks motivation.''
  
  
•  Socrates was called, "An immoral corrupter of youth."
  
  
•  When Peter J. Daniel was in the fourth grade his teacher, Mrs. Phillips, constantly said, "Peter you're never going to amount to anything." Peter was totally illiterate until he was 26. A friend stayed up with him all night and read him a copy of Think and Grow Rich. Now he owns the street corners he used to fight on and just published his latest book: Ms. Phillips, You Were Wrong.
  
  
•  Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was encouraged to find work as a servant or seamstress by her family.
  
  
•  Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.
  
  
•  The parents of the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso wanted him to be an engineer. His teacher said he had no voice at all and could not sing.
  
  
•  Charles Darwin, father of the Theory of Evolution, gave up a medical career and was told by his father "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat catching." In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, "I was considered by all my masters and by my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect.''
  
  
•  Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Walt Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.
  
  
•  Thomas Edison's teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything
  
  
•  Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn't read until he was seven. His teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams". He was expelled and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnical School.
  
  
•  Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15^th out of 22 in chemistry.
  
  
•  Isaac Newton did very poorly in grade school.
  
  
•  The sculptor Rodin's father said, "I have an idiot for a son." Described as the worst pupil in the school, Rodin failed three times to secure admittance to the school of art. His uncle called him uneducable.
  
  
•  Leo Tolstory, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college. He was described as "both unable and unwilling to learn.
  
  
•  Playwright Tennessee Williams was enraged when his play, Me, Vasha, was not chosen in a class competition at Washington University where he was enrolled in English XVI. The teacher recalled that Williams denounced the judges' choice and their intelligence.
  
  
•  F.W. Woolworth's employees at the dry goods store said he had not enough sense to wait upon customers.
  
  
•  Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
  
  
•  Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strike outs.
  
  
•  Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He did not become Prime Minister of England until he was 62, and then only after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks. He greatest contributions came when he was a senior citizen.
  
  
•  Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach's 10,000-word story about a soaring seagull, Jonathan Livingston Seagull before MacMillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. alone.
  
  
•  Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H, only to have it rejected by 21 publishers before Marrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway bestseller, spawning a blockbuster movie and a highly successful television series.

-Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen

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•  Most people have no idea of the amount of practice, discipline and effort that goes into becoming a superstar. For example, former U.S. Senator and former New York Knicks basketball star Bill Bradley practiced relentlessly. He had five spots on the basketball court from which he would shoot 25 times. If he didn't hit 22 baskets out of 25 shots, he'd start over. He was determined to stay there and do it over and over until he could do it right almost every time.
  
  
•  Novelist Carson McCullus endured three strokes before she was 29. While she was crippled, partially paralyzed and in constant pain, she suffered the profound shock of her husband's suicide. Others may have surrendered to such afflictions, but she settled for writing no less than a page a day. On that unrelenting schedule she turned out many distinguished novels including Members of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Café, and Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
  
  
•  When NFL running back Herschel Walker was in junior high school, he wanted to play football, but the coach told him he was too small. He advised young Herschel to go out for track instead. Undaunted by the lack of encouragement and support, he ignored the coach's advice and began an intensive training program to build himself up. Only a few years later, Herschel Walker won the Heisman trophy.

•  John Lennon, signer, musician, and songwriter
•  General George Patton, American general and tank commander
•  Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
•  Woodrow Wilson, 27^th President of the United States
•  Harry Belafonte, singer, actor, producer, civil rights activist
•  George Burns, actor, comedian
•  Cher, singer, actress
•  Agatha Christie, British novelist
•  Winston Churchill, Prime Minister Great Britian
•  Tom Cruise, actor
•  Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist
•  Albert Einstein, scientist
•  Whoopi Goldberg, actress and comedian

•  John Milton, famous poet and author, was blind.
  
  
•  Itzhak Perlman, world-class concert violinist, is paralyzed from the waist down.
  
  
•  Heather Whitestone, 1994 Miss America, is deaf.
  
  
•  Jim Eisenrich, professional baseball player, has Tourette's syndrome.
  
  
•  Rafer Johnson, decathlon champion, was born with a club foot.
  
  
•  Stephen Hawking, theoritical physicist and lecturer at Cambridge University and bestselling author of A Brief History of Time has Lou Gehrig's disease.
  
  
• James Earl Jones, world-renowned actor, stuttered from ages 6 to 14.
  
  
• Tom Dempsey was born without toes on his right foot. Although this might be considered a disability to some, he was born to a family who considered him quite capable and able bodied. Because he focused on his vision of what he was capable of rather than his limitations, he eventually became a place kicker in the National Football League. While playing with the New Orleans Saints, he kicked one of the longest field goals - 63 yards! - in NFL history. He achieved this feat with a kicking foot half the size of his other one.

• Marathoner Joan Benoit underwent knee surgery only 17 days before the U.S. Olympic trials, but her determination enabled her not only to make the team but also to win the first ever Olympic gold medal in her event.
  
  
• King Camp Gillette dreamed of a cockeyed invention that caused investors, metal engineers, and experts at MIT to snicker. They all believed that there was no way a razor could be made sharp enough to provide a clean shave and yet be cheap enough that it could be thrown away when it was dull. Gillette labored four years to produce the first disposal razor and another six years to get it placed on store shelves. Although only 51 blades sold during the first year, 90,844 were purchased in the second year and Gillette's risk-taking innovation was on its way to revolutionizing the shaving industry.
  
  
• Michelangelo endured seven long years of lying on his back on the scaffold to complete the paining of the Sistine Chapel.
  
  
• Eric Mohn has won numerous awards in local, national and even international art competitions for his watercolor paintings. Senator John Warner of Virginia and Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia are two people who have bought his paintings in recent years. Remarkably, Mohn is paralyzed in all our limbs and paints with a brush held in his mouth. Another remarkable feat about his accomplishment is that Mohn never even pursued art as a hobby or career until 1977, 13 years after a car accident left him paralyzed from the chest down.

The human spirit cannot be paralyzed. If you are breathing, you can dream. - Mike Brown

• Dennis Walters was a promising young golfer when a freak golf cart accident paralyzed both his legs. He had no intention of watching golf from the sidelines. Dennis learned how to hit golf balls from a sitting position, designed a swivel seat for his golf cart and eventually drove the ball 250 yards from a sitting position. Walters went on to become a golf instructor and a popular exhibitionist.
  
  
• Beethoven was completely deaf when he composed his masterpiece, The Ninth Symphony.
  
  
• Tom Sullivan lost his sight at birth because the wrong solution was put in to his eyes. He later decided that he could play every sport but baseball, basketball and tennis. Today he golfs, swims, runs, skies, rides horses and enjoys life to the fullest.
  
  
• David W. Hartman went blind at the age of 8. His dream to become a medical doctor was thwarted by Temple University Medical School, when he was told that no one without eyesight had ever completed medical school. He courageously faced the challenge of reading medical books by having 25 complete medical textbooks audio-recorded for him. At 27, David Harman became the first blind student to ever complete medical school.
  
  
• Almost no one at 3M believed that the Post-It notes had a future, but Art Fry kept handing them out to people until they gave the product a chance. Even after the first marketing attempt failed, Art did not give up on the idea. He persisted until the idea became a colossal success.
  
  
• Colonel Sanders had the construction of a new road put him out of business in 1967. He went to over 1,000 places trying to sell his chicken recipe before he found a buyer interested in his 11 herbs and spices. Seven years later, at the age of 75, Colonel Sanders sold his fried chicken company for a finger-lickin' $15 million!
  
  
• A young woman aspiring to land a permanent position in broadcasting found more failure than success. No United States radio station would give her an opportunity because "a woman wouldn't be able to attract an audience." She made her way to Puerto Rico and then, paying her own way, flew to Dominican Republic to cover and sell her stories on the uprising there. Back in the States, she valiantly pursued her passion, but after 18 firings, she wondered if a career in broadcasting was ever meant to be. Finally she persuaded an executive to hire her, but he wanted her to host a political talk show. She was familiar with the microphone but not politics. Using her comfortable conversational style, she talked about what the Fourth of July meant to her and invited callers to do the same. The program was a hit. Listeners loved it and the network realized it. Today Sally Jesse Raphael is a two-time Emmy Award winning host of her television talk show reaching eight million viewers daily throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
  
  
• Four-time Academy Award winning actress Katharine Hepburn was fired from several of her early stage roles. She was criticized for talking too fast, was considered ornery and difficult to work with, and was evaluated as too bony, thin and mannish to be on stage. Accompanied by her unwavering determination, she sought the assistance of a voice and drama coach who nurtured her through a variety of stage roles. Eventually, one of her performances drew great reviews and led to a movie contract.

-Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen
Hanock McCarty and Melader McCarty

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