the compass - by Kai - golden blue

I don’t like saying I’m “not built” for something. I always felt insulted by the concept as it’s conventionally understood. For instance, physics never came easily to me—and when I say this to people they offer up the explanation that I’m comparing myself to other MIT students, real, bona fide geniuses—but I’m talking about high school, when I spent weeks going over the same chapter of my $15 South Asian copy of Morin, over and over. Back then I thought, this must be how life is: that everything worth doing feels impossibly hard, like pushing against an immovable wall for years on end. I remember relishing how hard it was, difficult in a way nothing had ever been for me before. At the time I believed steadfastly in people starting out on level playing fields. That if I put in the hours I could succeed as well as anyone. This was necessary to soothe my fear that I’d never measure up to the academic weapons whose Physics Team biographies I doom-read in my spare time; I liked having a cou

I don’t like saying I’m “not built” for something. I always felt insulted by the concept as it’s conventionally understood. For instance, physics never came easily to me—and when I say this to people they offer up the explanation that I’m comparing myself to other MIT students, real, bona fide geniuses—but I’m talking about high school, when I spent weeks going over the same chapter of my $15 South Asian copy of Morin, over and over. Back then I thought, this must be how life is: that everything worth doing feels impossibly hard, like pushing against an immovable wall for years on end. I remem