I was relieved when the interviewers were satisfied with my response, which was that students absorb ideas and process them to create new ones that they then send out into the world to restart the cycle—much as stars absorb interstellar material to create heavy elements, which they then eject back into space to be processed anew. When molecular material is expelled, dispersed throughout the interstellar medium, and aggregated in dense clouds where some fraction reenters star-forming regions, the distribution pattern is not entirely different from the creation, dissemination, and progression of
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