Ten minutes when by. Nothing.
Seventeen minutes went by.
Sounds of frustration could be heard throughout the room.
The professor didn't say a word - he just wrote down things people were saying.
"A piece is missing."
"The battery's getting really hot."
"Doesn't it need a clippy thing?"
29 minutes go by.
"I got it!" Someone cries.
We all turn. And nothing.
"We had it..." And they try to light the bulb again.
They saw it so it gave them some hope of lighting the darn thing.
The same thing happened with a few others.
They kept getting it - they kept seeing the flashes.
But the flashes wouldn't last.
They knew, however, that they were on the right track.
Eventually, those who got it found four different ways to light it. And those who didn't got some help.
The professor writes on the board the famous quote by Edison:
"I found 3000 ways not to make a lightbulb."
In doing this, we've discovered many, many ways on how NOT to light the lightbulb. The battery got hot many times. We did the same things over and over again, wanting it to miraculously work (at which point, the professor goes to the board and writes: "the definition of insanity" lol).
"Try something different," he kept telling us, until finally someone got it and it stayed lit. The rest of us tried their technique and it worked! Every time.
The point of the lesson? Learning takes time.
It took us college students half an hour to figure out how to do that. But once we got it, it's not something we will forget. Having learned through all the different failures, we understand the concept behind it rather than just the vocabulary words.
