The Indus Valley script still hasn’t been cracked. Whole civilizations are waiting on someone patient enough.

Not everything has been figured out already. There are scripts nobody can read, sites nobody has dug and archives nobody has catalogued, all waiting on people patient enough to spend years on something that may not yield. School can leave the impression that knowledge is a finished building you are being shown around. It is much more like a building site.

Look up one genuinely open problem in a subject you like, whether that is a language, a disease, a proof or a ruin. Find out who is working on it now. The point is not to solve it, only to see that the edge is closer than it looks.