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Oh, I think a big problem today is kids don’t have enough grit. When I was a young child, I’d spend hours tinkering with little parachutes and tinkering with little kites, getting them to work, trying lots of designs. Kids today are not getting opportunities to learn from mistakes. I’ll never forget a Zoom call. I was discussing one of my earlier books called Calling All Minds, which is my kids’ project book, and I held up a paper snowflake, and I had a teacher ask me a question I almost couldn’t believe. What happens to the kids’ self esteem if the snowflake falls apart? And I said, You get another piece of printer paper, and you try again. I was shocked that somebody thought that would wreck a kid’s self esteem if a paper snowflake fell apart on the first try. Kids aren’t having enough time to just tinker, do things, learn from their mistakes. I’m seeing a lot of smart kids that we need in the workplace and they’re being so overprotected, and then you’re not going to have any grit.
One of the things that helped me to get up and try again is I had some very supportive mentors. And one of them was Jim the contractor. He’d worked with me on building this project. He was very supportive. It’s important to get, you know, have mentors. They are extremely important. So you’re not totally by yourself. And I had some people that were bad to me. And when I was in high school, I was bullied and bullied and bullied, and the only places I was not bullied was friends who shared interests. Some of the most fun stuff I ever did is we’d sit around in the shop and discuss how to build things. So the only places I was not bullied was riding horses, model rocket club, and electronic circuit building. Find the friends who share interest. That can make a big difference. Another thing you have to figure out is when to speak out. What’s your prime directive? I’m a Star Trek fan. Prime directive. If I overall want to improve animal welfare, it’s not going to overall improve animal welfare if I get in a fight with this one particular plant manager because that might interfere with, my long term goal. You win a battle and lose the war. So you’ve got to pick really carefully which battles you are going to pick.