journey has a first step. Every dream has a first destination.
The land of Learning is yours. And now it’s about time to move on to your next destination.
The last stop in the land of Learning
I’m almost positive there’s not a chapter in What to Expect When You’re Expecting that talks about what to do if your 1-year-old eats a cigarette butt.
That’s what happened to my friends one night while they were waiting for a table at a Mexican restaurant. Sophie, their incredibly fast toddler, was crawling around on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and made her move before anyone could stop her. For the next day, her adorable little baby breath smelled like Pall Malls. I don’t fault my friends; it’s hard to raise babies.
For the first three years you have a kid, you’re not really parenting. You’re protecting. Your job is to basically keep them from hurting themselves with tables and cabinets and toilets and dogs and cats and knives and anything within their surprisingly long wingspan. Which is why baby earrings have never made sense to me.
Why would I attach a shiny, sharp, windpipe-sized object to my child’s head? I have Fort Knox–style drawer locks that make getting a fork out a Criss Angel magic trick. Why would I make sure my baby is always traveling with tiny little weapons inches from her mouth? Why not just dangle a live scorpion from her pacifier? Just to kind of see what happens?
The only thing that makes even less sense than earrings for babies is Bunsen burners for seventh graders. “I’ve got an idea! Let’s give the most awkward, emotionally charged, hormone-intoxicated humans on the planet access to a flame and a never-ending gas source. The guys are all trying to show off in front of the girls; the girls are distracted wondering if the guys are even noticing them; they’ve all grown long arms and legs they barely know how to use. What better time in life to introduce them to the wonder that is the Bunsen burner? What could possibly go wrong?”
But it happens. In the seventh grade you go from building crooked coat-hanger models of the solar system to having ready access to the sun’s source of heat in the science lab.
Which, as it happens, is also your last stop in the land of Learning.
It’s the last building on the road. On a hook by the door hangs a lab jacket and a pair of safety goggles. (That word is impossible to spell correctly once you’ve typed “Google” a million times.)
As you put them on and walk down the hall, you’ll find yourself in a simple laboratory. There are beakers and colorful liquids, tubes and pipes and jars. If you lost your science notebook in the seventh grade and almost flunked the class because Mrs. Murtaugh did not play around when it came time to deliver your semester-long science notebook, hypothetically speaking, you may be a little nervous.
But don’t be. There’s only one thing you have to do in this laboratory.
Experiment.
That’s it. That’s the action you have to embrace in the land of Learning. Because scientists don’t fail; they experiment. They blow things up. They burn things down. They tinker. They smash. They mix. And when an experiment doesn’t go the right way, they don’t call it a failure. They say, “Look what we learned. We thought it would go one way and it went the opposite! What can we take away from this that will help us with our next experiment?” That’s why James Dyson had 5,126 prototypes before completing his industry-changing vacuum cleaner. It’s why Angry Birds, the wildly popular app, was Rovio’sfifty-second attempt at a game. It’s why WD-40 had thirty-nine other formulas that came before it. Everyone who succeeds learns through experimentation. 4
No matter what fear and doubt tell you, your identity is not at stake with the decisions you make and the actions you take as you learn. You’re a son or a daughter. You’re a father or a mother. You’re a husband or a wife. The Bunsen
The land of Learning is yours. And now it’s about time to move on to your next destination.
The last stop in the land of Learning
I’m almost positive there’s not a chapter in What to Expect When You’re Expecting that talks about what to do if your 1-year-old eats a cigarette butt.
That’s what happened to my friends one night while they were waiting for a table at a Mexican restaurant. Sophie, their incredibly fast toddler, was crawling around on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and made her move before anyone could stop her. For the next day, her adorable little baby breath smelled like Pall Malls. I don’t fault my friends; it’s hard to raise babies.
For the first three years you have a kid, you’re not really parenting. You’re protecting. Your job is to basically keep them from hurting themselves with tables and cabinets and toilets and dogs and cats and knives and anything within their surprisingly long wingspan. Which is why baby earrings have never made sense to me.
Why would I attach a shiny, sharp, windpipe-sized object to my child’s head? I have Fort Knox–style drawer locks that make getting a fork out a Criss Angel magic trick. Why would I make sure my baby is always traveling with tiny little weapons inches from her mouth? Why not just dangle a live scorpion from her pacifier? Just to kind of see what happens?
The only thing that makes even less sense than earrings for babies is Bunsen burners for seventh graders. “I’ve got an idea! Let’s give the most awkward, emotionally charged, hormone-intoxicated humans on the planet access to a flame and a never-ending gas source. The guys are all trying to show off in front of the girls; the girls are distracted wondering if the guys are even noticing them; they’ve all grown long arms and legs they barely know how to use. What better time in life to introduce them to the wonder that is the Bunsen burner? What could possibly go wrong?”
But it happens. In the seventh grade you go from building crooked coat-hanger models of the solar system to having ready access to the sun’s source of heat in the science lab.
Which, as it happens, is also your last stop in the land of Learning.
It’s the last building on the road. On a hook by the door hangs a lab jacket and a pair of safety goggles. (That word is impossible to spell correctly once you’ve typed “Google” a million times.)
As you put them on and walk down the hall, you’ll find yourself in a simple laboratory. There are beakers and colorful liquids, tubes and pipes and jars. If you lost your science notebook in the seventh grade and almost flunked the class because Mrs. Murtaugh did not play around when it came time to deliver your semester-long science notebook, hypothetically speaking, you may be a little nervous.
But don’t be. There’s only one thing you have to do in this laboratory.
Experiment.
That’s it. That’s the action you have to embrace in the land of Learning. Because scientists don’t fail; they experiment. They blow things up. They burn things down. They tinker. They smash. They mix. And when an experiment doesn’t go the right way, they don’t call it a failure. They say, “Look what we learned. We thought it would go one way and it went the opposite! What can we take away from this that will help us with our next experiment?” That’s why James Dyson had 5,126 prototypes before completing his industry-changing vacuum cleaner. It’s why Angry Birds, the wildly popular app, was Rovio’sfifty-second attempt at a game. It’s why WD-40 had thirty-nine other formulas that came before it. Everyone who succeeds learns through experimentation. 4
No matter what fear and doubt tell you, your identity is not at stake with the decisions you make and the actions you take as you learn. You’re a son or a daughter. You’re a father or a mother. You’re a husband or a wife. The Bunsen
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