Synchronicity

Yesterday, I went to give a talk at a nearby University. While I spent time thinking about it ahead of time, it took me all of an hour to prepare for this talk, and I wasn't nervous at all. In the middle of the talk, someone asked me about astroseismology and whether one of the oscillation modes could be responsible for the phenomenon I was trying to explain. Not that long ago, this would have made me nervous, and worked up. But I just said, 'I'm more or less completely ignorant about astroseismology, but I would guess that...' and it was fun to talk about. And fun to think about. And fun to argue about.

I was thinking about this afterwards, wondering what's different. Then, this morning, I was catching up with fellow bloggers, and find that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, and yes, I probably have much more than that invested at this point, and so of course I feel like I can admit ignorance, defend my ideas, discuss new ideas thoughtfully and generally just have a good time giving talks. Even to physicists. Because, apparently, I'm an expert. Huh.