Dubious Quality

To paraphrase, he said that learning how to interview people effectively was hard. Especially when you're interviewing people about a deeply traumatic time in their past.

He's doing groundbreaking research in Columbia. At least, it seems that way to me. He's getting unbelievable, intimate information from the interviews he's conducting, and he said it was because he was willing to get into a situation where he wasn't exactly sure what he was doing and survive the doubt until he figured it out.

Surviving the doubt is such a great description of what gets in the way of learning anything. There's always a point where the degree of difficulty looks like a high wall, and you can't ever imagine scaling it, and that's when you have to put your head down and keep working. You can fail, too, because failure is part of the process of learning when you understand how learning works. If it's not difficult, and there's no chance of failing, you're not pushing yourself hard enough.

I could bemoan not understanding this when I was younger, and I have (in this very space), but I'm glad I understand now. More importantly, I'm glad he does, too. 

He taught me, really.