It's true that luck is a big deal. Myself and colleagues/friends were working an internship at the end of grad school and they didn't have any room to keep us o

It's true that luck is a big deal. Myself and colleagues/friends were working an internship at the end of grad school and they didn't have any room to keep us on. So we were all furiously applying to places and having zero luck at all, we all wanted to work at the internship place permanently. Months of searching later, I ended up running into my old boss on a chance trip for eggs to the grocery store. A spot had just opened up and she put me up for it because she was reminded of my work from our chance encounter. I ended up getting the only position out of about fifteen of us, and I was far from the best intern. Years later I built on that and have an awesome career that I'm very proud of, whereas just about everyone else ended up floundering significantly. If I hadn't decided to bake something, pretty out of character for me, and realized I was out of eggs, and then had the drive to actually go to the store to get eggs, and then happened my old boss happened to be leaving just as I was walking in, I wouldn't be anywhere near the career level I am today. Literally if I had hit an additional stoplight on the way or decided to sit in my car for a minute extra or something I would have missed my old boss and the whole course of my career would have changed. Stuff like that makes me realize how much of a role luck plays.