In my professional career with Cornell, with time, a Bachelor's Degree was not enough. A Master's Degree was going to be required or you were out of the system. My wife had been interested in getting an advanced degree so we decided we'd better do it. In 1966, I requested and got a 10 months sabbatical leave. Wait. You can't get a Masters Degree in ten months! Maybe not. But we both did it. And that included my having to write a thesis. The only stumbling block about the thesis was you had to develop a hypothesis and prove that hypothesis by statistical analysis. Yikes! That means math. I hated math. And I have to take statistics? I can't ever pass statistics. No way. Well, I really studied hard. Our graduate school class involved fourty-five Extension Agents from all over the country. They had to take statistics too. Remember Pop? There's no such word as "can't?" On our final statistics exam, the class average for the final prelim was 50. I got 100!

Thanks, Pop, wherever you are! I finished my thesis, had it typed, bound and printed. What a relief!

Here's the moral of this story. Never give up. Try again. Work hard at the task at hand. Do not get discouraged. Be the best you can be and it will open doors for you that you never dreamed were possible.