On wisdom.

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." - Marcel Proust

This quote rings very true. The other day I was sitting with a former colleague who expressed a desire to truly narrow what he wanted to do professionally in his life before going to graduate school. His words were familiar. I said those words last year before making this grad school leap. What I didn't realize was just how much that didn't really matter. Sure, I'm not studying chemical engineering, but I've discovered that as long as one throws the ball in the general direction of the field there will be many beautiful and interesting things along the way.

I told my friend this. I told him also that I'm starting to understand that life is, in fact, long (should we be lucky in health and safety), and that we do, in fact, have time to do loads and loads within all those years (even if they do get faster as we go).

Thanks, grad school.