Ha! IAATP (I am a theoretical physicist). We're nothing special. Your comment is spot on. I'm not that smart, I just think of the world in a different way.

Ha! IAATP (I am a theoretical physicist). We're nothing special. Your comment is spot on. I'm not that smart, I just think of the world in a different way. No matter what I'm looking at, I view the world as a set of coupled differential equations. That's great for understanding how a pandemic works, but not so good at connecting with your neighbor over a beer. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and you should never think of yourself as less-than because someone else is better than you at something. You know what I can't do? Pass a FAANG interview. I've tried! 3 times! I write novel algorithms to handle complex data and do numerically accurate high-level math. Yes, I can even balance a binary tree (I had to do that to manage a list of basis functions), but I think about computing in a way that makes the people think I'm an idiot when I'm standing at a whiteboard. So I could say that all of those FAANG folks are smarter than me, but they're not. They just have different skills than me. The only person to compare yourself to is you from yesterday. And as long as you're making progress (on even just one dimension), consider it a success. There is so much more than "being smart"