Keep Trying, Even when things don't go as planned!

{Even Thomas Edison had over 1,000 unsuccessful attempts before finally inventing the lightbulb!}

Do you have a hobby that you really enjoy? Maybe you play a sport or are part of a team or group. From soccer to math club to piano, whatever it is that you do probably adds a lot of fun to your life. More than likely, your hobby or activity also requires some amount of practice. Through practice we can get better at something and learn about it in the meantime.

After weeks of practice, how great does it feel to win or succeed at something you’ve worked hard to do? This feeling of winning is like nothing else. No matter how hard we practice and try to do well, there’s always a chance that things won’t go as planned. We can’t win at every single thing, all the time. Did you know that even NASA scientists know what it feels like not to win?

This morning (Friday March 4, 2011), NASA’s Glory spacecraft launched from California, but it failed to reach orbit. So far the scientists think that the protective shell on top of the Taurus XL (the launching rocket) didn’t separate like it was supposed to. Scientists have been working on this project (practicing!) for a long time, but things still didn’t go quite right.

This can be a great reminder to us when we feel like things aren’t going quite the way we want them to. Maybe we get less than a perfect score on a test. Maybe our team loses the big game. The important thing is that we see what went wrong and keep on trying! That’s what the NASA scientists are going to do!

Image via National Records & Archives Administration