“Too dumb. You’ll never graduate from high school,” his elementary school teacher told 7-year-old Adam Zimmerman. Sure enough, he “failed” and was held back a grade.
Being left behind by friends made him feel like “trash”. But his teacher’s cutting comment changed his life. It transformed a kid with dyslexia into a person driven to succeed.
“Just because one person says something, don’t take their word, ” his mother told him. “Go out and prove them wrong. It’s not about the disability; it’s what you do about it.”
Zimmerman did graduate from high school, and at 5′7″ he excelled in two sports he was considered too small for: basketball and volleyball. He was MVP and All Conference in both.
That still wasn’t enough to earn him a big-time college scholarship. So he went to a Division Ⅱ school and worked on his game. And though a coach told him he’d never be a Division I basketball player, in his sophomore year he transferred to Marshall University in West Virginia, a Division I school. And he practiced and practiced. The following year he made the team as a walk-on player.
In May, the dumb kid who was too short graduate with a degree in sports management and marketing.
When he thinks back to that grade school teacher, he says, “I thank her for saying that. It’s unbelievable how a person’s words can stick in the back of your mind and push you to be more than what they say you can be.”
(From Reader’s Digest)
“你太笨了，連中學都很難畢業。”國小老師對7歲的Adam Zimmerman這麼說。正如老師所說，亞當沒有順利畢業而留了一級。
學習上被朋友們遠遠甩在後面的亞當感覺自己像個廢物。那位老師的尖刻論斷改變了他的一生，使一個有誦讀困難的孩子成長為一個成功的人。
媽媽告訴亞當：“不要太在意別人說什麼。你只要去證明他們的話是錯誤的。你不是沒有能力，而是需要付諸行動。”
亞當高中畢業了!在籃球和排球比賽中他取得了優異的成績，這兩種運動專案曾經是他的弱項。他成為最有價值的球員，又是體育聯盟的成員。
可這些成就並未使他有資格獲得一流大學的獎學金。亞當進入一所第二區學校繼續深造。教練斷言說亞當不可能成為第一區學校的籃球運動員，相反他大二時就轉入了西弗吉尼亞的馬歇爾大學——一所第一區學校。在大學裡亞當堅持不懈地練習，接下來的一年，他成為那個隊的臨時隊員。
5月份，這個“愚笨”的孩子在極短的時間內獲得了運動管理和市場學的.學位。
當他回想起自己的國小老師時，他說：“感謝她那麼說我。簡直難以置信，別人的負面評價能夠如此深刻地印在一個人的腦海中，並且比讚揚你的話起到更大的推動作用。”
