Academics spent a fair amount of time focusing attention on people who do exceptional things. Fauci’s h-score. Doudna’s career of research that led to the development of CRISPR. Banner’s masochistic desire to stay in grad school. The fawning over Nobel laureates in general.

This makes sense. After all, exceptional things are, well, exceptional. They stand out. It’s hard to not notice this stuff.

But you know what I find really impressive in a scientist? What really makes me jealous and wish I was like them, and what I aspire to? Competence. People who straight up have their act together and do all aspects of their job in a fully professional capacity, meeting the needs of the people they work with and work for.

In the fall, we’ll be starting our fourth semester of pandemic teaching. I imagine it will be the last. This is going to be more challenging than the previous semesters of pandemic teaching. Why is that?