We are all smart people

I have recently been thinking about my career path. About how much I like science. How much I like research. How much I hate writing. How much I love designing projects. How lazy I am. How hard it is for me to focus. How much I need structure. How much I need money. How much the writing process has improved for me. How maybe I'm not smart enough to learn new techniques.

Then today, I received an e-mail from a list server (which some of you may be on) that mentioned an article entitled,
The importance of stupidity in scientific research
Schwartz J Cell Sci.2008; 121: 1771

This was just the article I needed. I highly recommend reading this one page article.
Some highlights.

The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn’t know wasn’t merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.

we don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not really trying.

One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt,
this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help,

I think the feeling of stupidity is something most new scientist struggle with, and some may argue women scientist more than men. Seeing that I no longer consider myself a new scientist, I just wonder when this feeling goes away.