David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

by Malcolm Gladwell

He called that period in his life “the ugly years.” His parents didn’t know what to do. “It was probably the most frustrating part of my life, which is saying a lot.” He went on: “Because it wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. I was working really, really hard, and no one understood that part of the equation. They literally thought that I was conscientiously making decisions to be a disruptive kid, to not learn, to hold the class back. You know what it’s like, you’re a six- or seven- or eight-year-old kid, and you’re in a public school setting, and everyone thinks you’re an idiot, so you try to do funny things to try to create some social esteem. You’d try to get up every morning and say, today is going to be better, but after you do that a couple of years, you realize that today is going to be no different than yesterday. And I’m going to have to struggle to get through and I’m going to struggle to survive another day, and we’ll see what happens.”