One of my favorite motivational sayings is "Dare to be Great!", which is the catch phrase for my oft told advice to my children and grand children, ie, It's not enough to be the best you can be, you must Dare to be Great and if you fail 99 out of 100 times, you develop crucial resiliency and character by trying and that one time, you achieve Greatness!

A most satisfying example of walking this walk occurred last week. My grandson Shawn Atom is a freshman at RPI and he called me to relate an exemplary experience.  

He was attending a lecture and the professor brought in a guitar, to show the on screen visualization of sound waves, which he played.  

At the end of class the prof asked if anyone wanted to try it out. Shawn told me he approached and told his prof he'd played in the wrong key (wow!) and, probably taken aback, the prof challenged if he could do any better.  

Accepting the challenge, Shawn took a guitar pick out of his wallet and proceeded to play Ozzie Osborne's "Crazy Train" https://youtu.be/hQ_Z-10dXSE?si=MdEDDy-0W40Xp4Ya to the thunderous applause of the over 200 attendees.  

Better still, one of the crowd approached him and asked if he was interested in being lead guitar in the band he was forming.  

Dare to be Great (and Rock on)!