The best success stories include a lot of “and then I asked for help.”

Accounts of achievement get edited down to the person at the centre, which leaves out most of the mechanism. The full version has teachers in it, loans, somebody who made an introduction, a friend who explained the form. Asking is not an interruption to the story, it is a step that recurs throughout it. The belief that you ought to manage alone is the most expensive idea on offer.

Name what you are stuck on and the one person most likely to know the answer. Ask them something specific rather than general. Specific requests are easy to say yes to and make you look competent rather than lost.