I thought this was pretty well-written, but I didn't come away from it with the same lesson. It didn't seem like you needed any motivation to 'just do it', but

I thought this was pretty well-written, but I didn't come away from it with the same lesson. It didn't seem like you needed any motivation to 'just do it', but that you confused what 'it' was. You thought what you were doing (bugging professors to get funding/advising) was 'it' (doing research). This seemed like the right thing to do since it's the norm (this hints somewhat of cargo culting), but you didn't realize that what you were trying to do, what others had done before you, was not truly a prerequisite to the next step. I'm not clever enough to come up with a slogan like "Just do it" nor am I certain of the pattern behind your realization (skip the prereqs? refocus your efforts? blaze your own trail?); that'll have to be an exercise for the reader.