Persisting

Persisting

//Do you sometimes say, “I just can’t do this” or “This is too hard”?// //Do you give up when the answer is not immediately apparent?// //Persistence means staying the course, taking the time to work at// //something until you achieve excellence.//

In many cases, persistance can prove to be greater than skill and talent combined. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light, once said "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." He persisted through the development of the first practical incandescent light even though he failed many, many times. He still followed through, working for a year and a half, until he achieved his goal. Similarly, Rob, Emily, and I persisted through our experiment with rock candy. Our original plan was to follow the instructions and it would lead to rock candy that we could measure. However, after our first attempt, we waited a solid 24 hours and came to see that non of our rock candy had form even though the instructions we had read up on said that the crystals should form within 2 - 4 hours. Clearly we had failed in creating rock candy. We diagnosed the issue with Mrs. Knowles and realized that our ratio of water to sugar was wrong. We had too much water compared to sugar. We proceeded to go through with a second attempt by adding more sugar to each solution. After more tedious hours of boiling sugar, creating sticky messes all over the place, and even cracking glass jars, we waited once again for the results.

Failure, rubbed in our faces as we come back to see that there was no change in our solutions whatsoever. Mrs. Knowles to the rescue once again advised us to boil our solutions until most of the water had evaporated to make our solutions more sugary. After more tedious hours of boiling sugar and creating sticky messes all over the place, we were excited to see that our solutions were getting thicker. They were like thick glue and much heavier than water. On the verge of turning frustration into rage, after a good 10 minutes, crystals were already starting to form on our strings. We became really excited and realized that because we had our goal in mind, we knew it would be possible through persistance.

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