Suddenly I see

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
E.L. Doctorow

I am discovering that this might also be true about both dissertation writing and studying for an exam. Remember how I was complaining about not following my advisor's comments on my draft? Well, yesterday I wrote up a brief summary of most of his comments and somehow they made more sense to me! I guess they just sunk in and I'm calm enough now to see how to proceed.

Going even at a painstakingly slow speed through my book is giving me confidence that I will be able to understand harder topics because I'm not jumping to them but preparing the foundation to build upon. Our brains are truly a wonder!

In fact, I'm happy that my "headlights" are not too strong to lit up a whole lot of surface in front of me. I tend to reach for the farthest thing I can see without taking proper care of my steps. So I trip and fall and roll back to where I started. Going step by step has its benefits.