Loading ...When he was in the second grade , his father moved the family to Cornell so that he could work on an advanced degree , so my friend was uprooted and put in a class where he was the new kid . On his first day and very nervous among strangers , the teacher called on him to read aloud to the class . He stumbled , because of his nervousness , and the teacher ridiculed him saying ” I guess kids from Utah are stupid .” (That teacher should have been fired in my opinion .) After that he hated reading , but did well in math and science because those subjects required understanding the principles instead of parroting what was read .
He was a great engineer , and became the CEO of a company in his career .
BTW after graduation he was drafted and spent his military career testing cannon projectile velocities . His ‘job’ took about 15 minutes a day to run his calculations , so he asked if he could read during the rest of his (boring) day . He was told no – but hid a novel in his desk drawer and began reading for pleasure . After his tour of duty was complete he traveled to Canada to see me , just to tell me with great pride that he had just read ‘Hawaii’ – a very lengthy book !