Professional competence

I read the following in Adam Gopnik's New Yorker piece, Life Studies, and it rang true:

Whatever professional competence we feel in adult life is less the sum of accomplishment than the absence of impossibility: it's really our relief at no longer having to do things we were never any good at doing in the first place -- relief at never again having to dissect a frog or memorize the periodic table.

He had me at periodic table.

I know that my adult achievements are real but if I'd been forced to be a math teacher I would have spent my life convinced I'm a big dummy. Also, I read this article while laying in bed eating Swedish Fish, something I wouldn't have been allowed to do as a child. Sweet, sweet adult freedom.