Saturday, November 30, 2019

If at first you don't succeed, maybe you'll get the prize on second try!


A true story about not giving up.
"It's the birthday of Canadian children's writer L.M. Montgomery, (books by this author) born Lucy Maud Montgomery in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, in 1874. Her mother died when she was a toddler, and her father sent her to live with her mother's parents. There were no other children around, just Lucy and her grandparents, and she spent a lot of time reading and writing poems. She left home for a few years to teach, but when her grandfather died, she came home to live with her grandmother, and she stayed with her for the next 13 years. And during that time, she wrote her first novel, about an orphan girl with bright red hair who gets sent to live with a couple from Prince Edward Island who were hoping for a boy instead. It got rejected over and over, so she put the manuscript away in a hatbox and turned to other things. But eventually, she got it back out, read it, decided it wasn't that bad after all, and sent it out again. This time it got accepted, and in 1908, Anne of Green Gables was published and became a classic children's book."
from today's Writer's Almanac.

     College took me two tries and as I've written previously that turned out much to my benefit. High school in no way prepared me for college. After five unsuccessful quarters at South Dakota State College I transferred to Augustana College. While, that semester at Augie was academically satisfactory, I still had no vocational direction. That's when I enlisted in the Marines.
     With one successful semester at Augustana re-enrolling after my discharge was easy. In the summer of my second year there I met Joanne, and the rest is history. How different my life would have been had succeeded in my first college attempt. Much of life can only be understood in the rear view mirror!   Perhaps I should write a litany thanking God for failure. 😀

Takk for alt,

Al

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