Practice matters, but it’s not enough.

I’m a good shot. I’ve always been a good shot. When I started shooting, I was already a good shot. I could hit things even then that other people couldn’t hit. I got better with time and practice, but I was obviously good right away.

For instance, I was better than my father within a week of starting shooting even though I was seven and he’d been shooting for 25 years. I suspect my natural talent ceiling was very high, perhaps world class, if I’d pursued it as a vocation.

But math is the antipode. I started out poor and got worse with time. In high school, I studied far more than most of my schoolmates and performed far worse. There is no amount of practice that will make me excel or even be good at this field.

That’s just life.

When I brought this issue up with Hambrick, he noted that, in his introductory psychology course, some of the students who study very little do better than the ones who study a lot.

I could probably walk in and take the final exam of that class and score in the top one percent. Why? I remember things well. Has nothing to do with practice. Just another genetic gift I suspect. (My mom had true eidetic memory; I just have really good memory.)

It’s not fair that genes determine so much. But it seems to be the case. Welcome to an indifferent universe.