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“Not again!” She thought to herself as she felt tears starting to form and her cheeks starting to blush. She’d been working in the lab for hours. The sun had gone down long ago, and she hadn’t eaten a meal since she’d left her house early in the morning. She took a long, sharp inhale, thinking it would stifle her tears and let her get on with her work. It didn’t. The tears started in earnest, and she left to the sanctuary of the women’s bathroom, a defunct and quiet space in these academic halls. “Why did I even think I would be any good at this? I should have never gone back to school. I’m an idiot.” She let the barrage of insults loose in her mind, let some tears fall, found a candy bar in her backpack, splashed some water on her face, took a few deep breaths, squeezed her fists, and walked back into the lab. She’d fine this same routine for practically every assignment this semester. Today at least she was lucky enough to find that candy bar. Sometimes all she would find in her bag were circuit components and other debris. Just then, one of her fellow students punched the lab bench in anger and declared loudly that he was giving up. “Wow.” She thought. “I guess I’m not the only one who’s emotional about this.” It was then she realized that maybe this experiment, with all it capacitors and resistors and current measurements was actually just hard! It didn’t have anything to do with whether or not she was capable, she was. It was just hard. She took one more look of the lab bench and tried to set up her circuit again. She carefully connected all of the components and turned on the power supply. Readings started increasing on the monitoring equipment, and then poof! One of the resistors exploded. With that, she decided it was time to pack things up and get a good night’s sleep. She resolved she would come back in the morning with fresh eyes, only this time she would be a little bit nicer to herself.