Not all difficulties have a silver lining, of course. What Caroline Sacks went through, in her organic chemistry class at Brown was an undesirable difficulty. She is a curious, hardworking, talented student who loves science—and there was no advantage to putting her in a situation where she felt demoralized and inadequate. The struggle did not give her a new appreciation of science. It scared her away from science. But there are times and places where struggles have the opposite effect—where what seems like the kind of obstacle that ought to cripple an underdog’s chances is actually like Alter
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