This seems accurate to me. I was never particularly good at math and I was talking to a friend of mine with a PhD in number theory when I mentioned that I thoug

This seems accurate to me. I was never particularly good at math and I was talking to a friend of mine with a PhD in number theory when I mentioned that I thought it would help to show new students to math more of what math research was really like to get them interested. He shot me down with, "No, you really need to understand all of those basics before math research will make any sense."