Perhaps this is why, even when things get difficult, I'm able to keep a generally cheerful, positive attitude:
“It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer .”~ Albert Einstein
Some say that I've stayed with Todd too long. Perhaps. However, I do feel that in spite of the discomfort, I have gleaned a lot of wisdom (and empathy) that I wouldn't otherwise have. So, that's good.
The Einstein quote made me smile. "I stay with problems longer." It had never occurred to me that I'd gain marital counsel from Albert Einstein.
When we look at academics, it is abundantly true that there is great value to staying with those problems--to keeping plugging away until we understand.
The persistence that leads to a student truly grasping a concept is not the same as being apathetically content with the status quo. It is a resolve that "I will not flee this problem--I will not give up--until I understand the very root of it, so that I can apply the principles to other problems in the future."
That doesn't mean that I will spend the rest of my life reducing fractions or diagramming sentence structure.
