When I was 16, I performed relatively poorly in my GCSE exams, exams which every kid in the UK takes. Having missed most of my classes, and barely studied, I received a D in math and an F for French (which I think is funny). I’m a little embarrassed to even write about this, and I’ll try to redeem myself by letting you know that four of my nine grades were C: for physics, biology, English language, and English literature. Any small success I had was basically down to luck, and it was terrifying to take those exams with no preparation. It’s only in the last few years that I stopped having nightmares about it.
This is when I hit rock-bottom, a pivot point at which I decided to turn my life around. I studied hard until I was 18, got into a relatively good “red-brick” university (the University of Reading, pronounced “redding”), and ended up with a first-class honors degree in electronic engineering. I also went on to get a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford, one of the top universities in the world, and to become a world-class computer processor designer and architect. I’m the inventor of at least ten patents in the field. All of this is not to brag (well, maybe a little), but to show how significantly I was able to turn my life around, and so qualify what I am about to write next: persistence is the most important skill that you can acquire. Now I’ll explain why.
By the time I was 16, the headmaster (principal) of my school had decided, because I had been performing so poorly, that I did not have an academic temperament. In fact, as I later proved, the problems were unrelated to my ability to handle academic subjects; they were emotional and social. Because of this, he recommended that I go to a technical college, and study for a vocational qualification. I went to Brooklands Technical College in Weybridge, and I studied (trained) to get a B.Tech National Diploma in engineering. I’m so grateful that I took this unusual path. I learned to solder electronic components to boards and to weld pieces of metal together using both oxygen-acetyline and electric arc. I learned to use machine tools to turn, drill, and mill blocks of metal into useful things. I…
