Library books come back with other people’s notes in the margins. Somebody always learned it before you.

Somebody has been here before you. Library margins are full of other people’s notes, which is mildly annoying and also proof that the thing defeating you has defeated and then been solved by a long line of strangers. Nobody is the first person to find this chapter hard, or this situation confusing. The feeling of being uniquely stuck is almost always an illusion of being alone with it.

Go and find the notes this week. Ask the person a year ahead of you, read the comments, talk to the teacher who has watched two hundred students hit the same wall.