学进去

These days I heard a story about a famous research scientist. A newspaper reporter asked him why he was able to be so much more creative than the other people.

He answered that it all came from an experience with his ________ that happened when he was about four years old. He tried to take out a bottle of milk from the fridge, ________ he couldn’t hold the bottle and it fell, spilling the milk all over the kitchen floor—a sea of ________!

When his mother came into the ________, instead of shouting loudly at him or punishing him, she said, “Robert, what a great and ________ mess you have made! Well, the damage has already been done. Would you like to get down and play in the milk for a few minutes ________ we clean it up?”

Indeed, he did. After a few minutes, ________ mother said. “You know, Robert, whenever you make a mess like this, you have to clean it up. So, ________ would you like to do that? We could use a mop, a towel or a sponge. Which do you prefer? “He chose the sponge and together they ________ the spilled milk.”

His mother then said. “You know, what we have here is a failed experiment in how to effectively carry a big milk bottle with ________ small hands. Let’s go out in the garden and fill the bottle with water and see if you can discover a way to carry it without ________ it.” The little boy learned that if he held the bottle at the top near the lip with both hands, he could carry it without dropping it. What a(n) ________ lesson!

The scientist said it was at that moment that he knew he didn’t need to be ________ to make mistakes. Instead, he learned that mistakes were just ________ for leaning something new which is, after all, what scientific experiments are all about. Even if the experiment “doesn’t work”, we usually learn something ________ from it.