Everyone Here Is Smarter Than Me

two weeks into uni and i've come to a conclusion: everyone here is smarter than me.

i don't mean this in a self-deprecating "oh no i'm so dumb" way. i mean it in a very factual, observational way. the evidence is overwhelming.

exhibit a: the guy in my programming class

his name is james. james finished the first assignment in 20 minutes. the assignment that took me four hours. he then spent the rest of the tutorial helping three other people while i was still figuring out why my for loop wasn't working.

(it was an off-by-one error. of course it was.)

exhibit b: the study groups

people form study groups here. like, voluntarily. they meet in the library and explain concepts to each other and it's all very wholesome. i joined one last week.

within five minutes someone said "oh this is just like the pumping lemma for regular languages" and everyone nodded. i nodded too. i have no idea what that is.

exhibit c: the questions they ask

in lectures, people ask questions like "but doesn't that contradict the halting problem?" meanwhile i'm still trying to figure out what slide we're on.

coping mechanisms

i've developed a few strategies:

sit near the front (can't see how fast everyone else is working)
ask questions after class (no witnesses)
remind myself that comparison is the thief of joy
forget strategy 3 immediately and compare myself anyway

plot twist

i talked to james today. turns out he's been coding since he was 10 and his dad is literally a software engineer at google. so. context matters, i guess?

also he said he struggles with the math parts. which made me feel slightly better because i'm okay at math. not great. but okay.

the real realization

maybe everyone isn't smarter than me. maybe they just know different things. maybe the girl who's amazing at algorithms spent years learning algorithms. maybe the guy who breezes through calculus did it in high school already.

we're all at different starting points. the finish line is the same.

(i'm still intimidated though. very intimidated.)

gonna go fail at my assignment now. productively.