Once upon a time, there was a girl named Natalie. Natalie Battle. And it was an excellent name for this girl because she NEVER GAVE UP. HEr idea was that PERSISTENCE LEADS TO GREATNESS.
In fact, she believed in that phrase so much, that she painted it o her bedroom wall. Which didn't make her parents happy. Even if their daughter was only 7 and knew how to spell words like "persistence", it was still not a good idea to paint on the walls.
Her favorite discoverer was Johannes Kepler, who had an "aha" moment, like an apple landing on his head. He was discussing Platonic Solids and their ratios. And he realized that the planets followed something similar. She loved him because he was wrong. There was no connection between those 2 things, no matter how much he was trying to understand them or fit those two ideas together. And then, somewhere along the way, he discovered the laws of planetary motion. Persistence.
And she grew up to work for a group of people who send rockets into the sky. She decided to dedicate her life to studying a patch of sky. She was not a person who liked to be limited, but in this case, there was too much to look at. If you stretch your hand out in front of you, the palm of your open hand was the size and scope of her study. She said, "Okay, you can limit me to the size of my hand, but I demand a piece of the sky." It turned out that there are 250 million stars in that tiny piece of sky. So her work was still not limited.
And later, her own rocket, which cost millions of dollars, more than all the cars in the state, her rocket was stalled on the moon. 2 wheels broke. And so the patch of sky she was focused on had to go on existing with her and her understanding. But someone else created a new idea, and so she stumbled onto other discoveries. Persistence. (It's the secret to science. There is no end. There is only the possibility of you giving up. Don't give up.)
http://www.onbeing.org/program/on-exoplanets-and-love/5029
http://www.flickr.com/photos/speakingoffaith/8480735637/sizes/l/in/photostream/
In fact, she believed in that phrase so much, that she painted it o her bedroom wall. Which didn't make her parents happy. Even if their daughter was only 7 and knew how to spell words like "persistence", it was still not a good idea to paint on the walls.
Her favorite discoverer was Johannes Kepler, who had an "aha" moment, like an apple landing on his head. He was discussing Platonic Solids and their ratios. And he realized that the planets followed something similar. She loved him because he was wrong. There was no connection between those 2 things, no matter how much he was trying to understand them or fit those two ideas together. And then, somewhere along the way, he discovered the laws of planetary motion. Persistence.
And she grew up to work for a group of people who send rockets into the sky. She decided to dedicate her life to studying a patch of sky. She was not a person who liked to be limited, but in this case, there was too much to look at. If you stretch your hand out in front of you, the palm of your open hand was the size and scope of her study. She said, "Okay, you can limit me to the size of my hand, but I demand a piece of the sky." It turned out that there are 250 million stars in that tiny piece of sky. So her work was still not limited.
And later, her own rocket, which cost millions of dollars, more than all the cars in the state, her rocket was stalled on the moon. 2 wheels broke. And so the patch of sky she was focused on had to go on existing with her and her understanding. But someone else created a new idea, and so she stumbled onto other discoveries. Persistence. (It's the secret to science. There is no end. There is only the possibility of you giving up. Don't give up.)
http://www.onbeing.org/program/on-exoplanets-and-love/5029
http://www.flickr.com/photos/speakingoffaith/8480735637/sizes/l/in/photostream/
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