Reading Reflection 3

The Wright Brothers

1. My favorite thing I learned from David McCullough's biography on the Wright Brothers was the fact that the two never truly graduated from high school; it always baffles me when I realize how education doesn't always beat a drive to succeed, it can be done without textbooks and that's always reassuring. There wasn't anything I didn't really like about the two, but I admired their hard work, dedication, and ability to fail. This overcoming of failure was evident when they had to modify the original craft's design in order to fly.
2. Obviously education wasn't as developed as other people, so the boys made up for this in other areas, including their ability to overcome failure, resilience, and dedication.
3. At first, I was confused as to why the brothers didn't build their planes in Ohio, but Kitty Hawk has hills that I understood; they aren't extremely tall, so if a plane were to crash it wouldn't be as terrible as maybe another type of hill. Even with that reasoning, I'm still not positive and hence there's the most confusion.
4. If I had to ask some questions, it would be about how mad the two were concerning the whole Smithsonian debacle. I'm impressed that Orville had the original aircraft sent to England, since the US refused to acknowledge their craft as the first to catch flight, even though it clearly was. It was mostly a political thing, which truly grinds my gears; is your stupid politics more important than actual science? Apparently they thought so.
5. For the Wright Brothers, I think hard work meant failing and starting over from the pieces, which I agree with.