The word "science" is ambiguous. It denotes two very different kinds of activities. The first is the lofty intellectual ideal of solving a major problem, winn

The word "science" is ambiguous. It denotes two very different kinds of activities. The first is the lofty intellectual ideal of solving a major problem, winning a Nobel, and getting your name in the history books. The second is the daily grind of reading other people's papers, providing peer review, writing grant proposals, and generally interfacing with other humans as a cog in a grand machine. The second is in some sense "easier" than the first. It's a lot more work, takes a lot more time, but it's a relatively straightforward (if often tedious) process that pretty much anyone can do with enough diligence. The first is a lot more fun, can often be done while showering, but is also fraught with risk and dependent on luck. You have to find just the right problem at just the right time under just the right circumstances. You can spend your time slogging, or you can spend your time buying intellectual lottery tickets and hope that lightning strikes, but you can't do both, at least not at at the same time. The good news is that engaging in the daily slog is often (but not always) good preparation for and improves the odds of having lightning strike. So as a practical matter, that is often a good place to start. You might feel as if you're wasting your time reading everybody else's bullshit papers instead of writing the next Nobel prize winner yourself, but you're not. You're actually an essential part of the process even if you don't end up with the glory. And some day you just might be facing a really hard problem and go, "Wait a minute, this seems kinda like that thing I remember Dr. Arglebargle talking about three years ago, except that he missed this one detail..." and that's when the magic happens.