Compléter Infinitives vs. GerundsVersion en ligne Read and complete par Ma. Guadalupe Torres Pelcastre 1 apply studying moved saying succeed worked told paid transferred think teach attend to heard teaching feeling speak destroy chose Einstein's Early Education Albert Einstein was born in Ulm , Germany , in 1879 . Because he learned to at a late age , his parents feared that he was retarded . Modern observers prefer that he was a daydreamer . When he was 5 years old , Einstein began to a Catholic school . One instructor was especially critical of his abilities and his parents that it did not matter what field young Albert because he would not in it . In 1889 , Einstein to a very strict German school called the Luitpold Gymnasium . The rigid structure forced Einstein to distrust authority and become skeptical . At age 12 , Einstein picked up a mathematics textbook and began himself geometry . By 1894 , Einstein's father's business had failed to prosper , and the family to Italy . Einstein , however , remained behind and began lonely and unhappy . Consequently , he less attention to his studies and was finally asked by one of the teachers to leave . He joined his family in Italy but was not able to matriculate at a university because he did not have a diploma . When he that a diploma was not necessary to enter at the Swiss Polytechnique Institute in Zurich , he decided . Einstein traveled to Switzerland but did not pass the entrance examination . He was not prepared well enough in biology and languages , so he enrolled in the Gymnasium at Aarau to prepare himself in his weaker subjects . Albert enjoyed in Aarau more than at the Luitpold Gymnasium because the teachers wanted to students how to . He took the exam again and was finally permitted to matriculate into a four - year program . Einstein did not excel during these years at the Institute . In fact , he rarely attended the lectures . He read his books at home and borrowed his classmates' notes to pass tests . When Einstein graduated in 1900 , he failed to obtain a position at the Institute . His professors did not intend to reward Einstein's lackadaisical attitude toward classes with a position . Because he did not get an academic appointment , he worked at the Swiss Patent Office . He there for several years until he was offered an appointment as Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Zurich . It was there that Einstein's revolutionary theories of space - time began to take hold and threatened to the reputations of other colleagues who had built their careers on Newton's ideas of a clockwork universe .