Why is it hard to wait 1 year when you’re five?  Or wait 5 years when you’re twenty-five?  My theory is that it’s all relative to your current age.  20% of your life is a long time regardless of your age.  And that’s a shame because so many great things in life take a while before they pay off.

Learning guitar for the first few months is painful (figuratively and literally), but very rewarding once you can play some chords smoothly.  It’s the same with engineering.  Once you get all the boring stuff done in first year, you start to get a taste for the fun stuff.

When I was young I never had the patience to learn the piano (quit after a month) but I picked up a guitar a couple years ago and haven’t looked back.  And it’s the same with school, when I was young I would always try to finish my homework as fast as I could, most of the time sacrificing speed with quality.  Now, I know a bit better.

There are a million things that we can learn from our elders but one that should not be overlooked is patience.  They say it’s good to be young at heart but I think it’s better to be old at patience.