The room is silent except for thirty or so sounds of scratching at various paces. Some scratches are going at a furious pace, while some are more relaxed. Still, there’s a certain tension in the air that can be felt from the lack of noise.

I find it’s funny how I always hated to see a proof when I was in school. In my eyes, it was always just so boring. I knew that the teacher was giving an equation that was correct, so I didn’t see the point in trying to drag through the derivation of the equation. To make matters more confusing, my teachers would show us the proof once, and then we usually didn’t have to worry about how it came about anymore. At that point, we could simply apply it.

I write and say this to myself over and over again, but it’s always worth repeating: we cannot obsess over work that is slightly imperfect. While it is nice to think of alternate scenarios or instances where we should have improved, the reality is that learning is the process of transforming those things that I’ve done wrong to things I’ll do right the next time. It’s never fun in the moment, no, but in the long run you’ll be able to solidify the lesson.

Pretty much anywhere I go in the region that I live, people will react to me saying that I’m going to be a scientist with this: “Of course, you have to be smart if you’re a scientist.”