Nothing is impossible. You can be anything you want to be. If you think you can do it, you can. Sayings like these make me cringe. I’m sure they’re intended to motivate, but they also imply that those who don’t achieve their dreams, just haven’t tried hard enough. I’d love to figure skate in the Olympics, win the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, and write symphonies that rival Beethoven’s. Age, intellect, and natural abilities say that isn’t going to happen, no matter how hard I try. It’s not just the big dreams. Things that many people do easily, are simply out of my grasp. Several years of pursuing a foreign language, left me far from fluent. My college roommate, who had only two years of French, spoke it well enough to be accepted into the French dorm in her sophomore year. Socially, I do fine with one or two people whom I know well. I don’t mind public speaking and have comfortably addressed a room of five hundred people. Send me to a party with twenty or...