There are moments in life when we feel like the stupidest person in the world. For me, that moment came in a lecture hall at Leipzig University, Germany, while trying to understand something called Markov Transition Matrix.
Experience Abroad: Germany
At the time I was taking the SEPT (Small Enterprise Promotion and Training) program at Leipzig University. One of the courses required an understanding of statistics and probability models that, honestly, had been very hard for me to grasp ever since my undergraduate years. I read the material over and over, asked classmates, even stayed up late staring at the same formulas, but understanding never came.
At that point, a rather unsettling question surfaced: was I simply not smart enough to be here?
It took time to realize that the question was aimed in the wrong direction. There is a fundamental difference between not being smart dan being stupid. Not being smart means not yet having mastered something, a temporary condition that effort can fix. Being stupid is giving up trying because you have already surrendered to the belief that you are not capable.
Everyone has faced, and will always face, things they haven't yet mastered. A new engineer may not yet be skilled at presenting. A senior accountant may not yet be skilled at coding. That isn't stupidity, it's the natural process of learning. Stupidity only appears when someone stops trying, letting that feeling of inadequacy become the final verdict.
The lesson from the Markov Transition Matrix in Leipzig, in the end, wasn't about statistics. It taught me that the willingness to keep trying, however slowly, however many times understanding eluded me, is what separates someone who is learning from someone who has given up.
I certainly wasn't always the smartest person in class. But I never stopped trying. And that means I'm not stupid.
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