David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

world. They were capable of looking at
what the rest of us thought of as a great
advantage, and seeing it for what it
really was. Monet, Degas, Cézanne,
Renoir, and Pissarro would have gone to
their second choice.
So what happened to Stephen
Randolph at Harvard? I think you can
guess the answer. In his third year, he
took quantum mechanics. “I didn’t do
well,” he admitted. “I think I might have
gotten a B-minus.” It was the lowest
grade he’d ever received. “My
perception was that either I wasn’t good
at it or I wasn’t good enough at it.
Maybe I felt that I had to be the best at it
or be a genius at it for it to make sense
for me to continue. Some people seemed