Robert Ballard, the legendary oceanographer who discovered the wreck of the Titanic, delivered a commencement address at Connecticut College in 2007 that was built around the metaphor of mountain climbing. He shared a counterintuitive insight from his decades of exploration: climbing a small mountain requires the same daily effort as climbing a towering one. You get up at the same time, face the same trials, and risk the same falls. Ballard pointed out that falling off a 1,000-foot mountain kills you just as surely as falling off a 30,000-foot peak—so choosing a small dream doesn't actually protect you from failure. The only difference is that tall mountains are less crowded because they intimidate people, making the path to the summit paradoxically easier. His message to graduates was simple and bold: dream big, because the cost of ambition is the same as the cost of playing it safe.