1 - Guiding Questions:
(1) How would you define “failure”?
Failure is a relative concept, for it depends on our own value and metrics. If our life goal is to be rich, then struggling in poor means failure.
(2) How failures could be a blessing in disguise? Please include a story of yours.
Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something.
Five years ago, I failed the the national entrance examination for postgraduate. It was a shock to me since I was quite confident about my ability to take an exam. But now, I think that failure is good for my development for the reason that I stop viewing myself as a special talented person and change busloads of bad habits unawareness before.
(3) Who/What made us tend to avoid failure?
Avoiding failure comes from our education system, our overbearing or critical parents and mass media. Our education system and overbearing or critical parents tend to punish those who don't do well and try new stuff. On the other hand, all the mass media constantly expose us to stellar success after success, while not showing us the thousands of hours of dull practice and tedium that were required to achieve that success.
(4) Do you have any “VCR questions”? And what are they?
Now my "VCR questions" is "How could I start my plan of English training?" After finishing this chapter, I think that what I need to do is shut up and do it
(5) Have you done “do something” recently? or are you going to do some “do something”?
I have attended reading clubs to improve my English since I want to teach children English in the future. I also need to take actions on learning English teaching skills before the month end.
2 - Expressions
(1) right out of the gate
原文：... and I got to experience it right out of the gates.
意思是“立刻，一出门就”，“一毕业就”。表示从头做起，从底层开始做起，可替换的表达有“right from the start”, “from the very beginning”。
(2) Second Coming of Tesla
原文：To them, the fact that I could program the VCR without looking at the instruction manual made me the Second Coming of Tesla.
Tesla指的是尼古拉·特斯拉，是个物理学家，他是交流电、无线电、无线遥控、火花塞、X光乃至水电的重要创造者和推动者，公认为是电力商业化的鼻祖。特斯拉还有另一个意思，特斯拉(Tesla)公司。特斯拉(Tesla)公司是一家美国电动车及能源公司，产销电动车、太阳能板、及储能设备。文中该指的是物理学家尼古拉·特斯拉。
Second Coming of 指的是“ ... 的复出；...的再现”。W.B. Yeats有一首诗就叫做 The Second Coming(《基督再临/二度圣临》)：
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
(3) in a daze
原文：I walked around in a daze for years, asking myself dumb VCR questions:..
意思：If someone is in a daze, they are feeling confused and unable to think clearly, often because they have had a shock or surprise. 迷惑。
daze相近意思的词有stupefaction, confusion, mental confusion, confusedness, muddiness, disarray。
