Human beings have limits; that is the nature of being human. It's still difficult, though, to come to grips with how limited my own abilities are, and face the fact that there's just some things that I can't do.
When I was a kid, I was like most other kids: thought I was the sh*t or the bomb, that I could climb that tree, could be the best at this video game, could be cooler than everyone else. Oh you got the new Pokemon card? Well I got the shiny rare limited-edition one; it's always comparing oneself to others and try to one-up them. As a kid I thought I was invincible; nothing could stop me.
But then came the first pull-up challenge during P.E. class: no matter how hard I tried to pull my chin up over the bars, gravity just wouldn't allow it. That was one of the first times I distinctly remembered, "oh man, I'm not able to do this."
College is a very very humbling experience in this regard. Sure you can get by with some "softer" classes like Humanities or Asian Literature (no offense to those majors), write a 10-page paper right before the deadline and get by the class, but there are some seriously difficult majors that require the right type of mindset and IQ. I never ventured into those hardcore-sounding ones like "Engineering" or "Advanced Physics," only venturing as high as Math 242 Calculus III, before taking my first B- since Home Economics and being scared off.
I consider myself a relatively smart person who "gets it" pretty quickly, a quick learner of things if I am interested in them, but the sciences are just difficult to be a quick learner in. Sometimes it requires something to "click in" and if it doesn't click, everything seems like gibberish and nothing makes sense. Its when intuition gets thrown out the window and the really raw material that comes through, that's what separates the advanced thinkers v. others. For me, I've always been someone who is fine memorizing easy information, learning languages and memorizing historic facts, knowing laws for the bar exam. But when it comes to using that information to build a physics equation from scratch, for example, or prove a mathematical formula, the implementation part is where I hit a wall. I commonly wonder about physics and science problems, "there are not enough examples! How do people create something without knowing what they're doing and seeing someone else do a similar task first?" I much rather prefer the "lot of information but quick and easy" of learning 500 new Korean words a day than the "short but difficult" solve-this-problem-using your knowledge and having to solve different problems. Part of it might be lack of dedication and laziness, but part of it definitely is not having the right kind of brain for it, reaching a limit of understanding and brain capacity to process everything.
It's also the sinking feeling working on a problem that I haven't made any progress on it, that I've just been going in circles but not getting to the core of the issue and having no work to show for any of the studying I've done, whereas easier tasks allow you to track your progress of "I learned so and so many words" or "at least I've done this for the day." Science classes can make you feel useless, lonely, unproductive, and unfulfilled.
I say this because computer science, although still OK now, has the potential to hit a limit for me, and I wonder how I will handle it when it gets too hard. Sure I'm pursuing an undergrad degree and I already have a doctorate so theoretically I should be able to handle it, but it's one of the hardest things on earth apparently: a hard-science undergrad. Will I eventually reach my limit? I hope not, but it's certainly bringing back memories of when I DID reach a limit in science, and decided to pursue finance/law in the first place.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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