There’s a lot that I don’t recall from my time as an engineering student, but one thing I do remember is studying failures, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. I’ve forgotten which other disasters we covered, along with most of the mechanical principles at play, but the meta-lesson may be the most important takeaway from my engineering education: sometimes, you can learn more about how something works from seeing where (and how) it breaks than from studying how it’s supposed to work.

I wrote a guest post on Randy Au’s Counting Stuff about the joys - and value - of unstructured conversations with people you’re not already working with closely. I recently watched Bill Nye talk about his approach to problem solving and scientific thinking, and one of his main points really resonated with me - “Everyone you’ll ever meet knows something you don’t.” As someone with raging, chronic imposter syndrome, the way that was phrased (implying the corollary, “every time you meet someone new, you’ll know something they don’t) was especially powerful.