Funnily enough, I was reading this letter last week as part of the excellent compilation, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (which has many

Funnily enough, I was reading this letter last week as part of the excellent compilation, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (which has many more letters). I've always admired Feynman's ability and perseverance to "see" something immediately as opposed to doing the long and drawn out calculations that are a badge of honor among engineering grads. Actually he mentioned this need to "see" through problems in one of his stories with John Wheeler who was able to immediately understand the ideas of self-action of an electron that Feynman was presenting with equations were just describing reflected light. I imagine that in this case, Feynman saw immediately what problems the student was grappling with and had the words to communicate those thoughts in an unpretentious way. It certainly struck a chord with me.