go for it?”
“If it’s what you think you want, absolutely. The most important determiners of success are motivation, persistence, and hard work. Everything I know about you says you’re capable of all three. But finding a vocation you love makes all the difference. Once you have that, the motivation follows naturally, greasing the wheels to make the persistence and hard work less painful. Enjoyable, even.”
“Is that the way it is for you?”
Mia thought about it. “Most of the time.”
She grimaced, remembering how long she’d struggled over a single proof, and the stress and dread she’d felt over the pressure to get something published in time to beef up her CV. It had sucked a lot of the joy out of her work. Almost all of it, in fact.
“But I don’t always believe in myself either,” she admitted. “Everyone has moments of self-doubt and crises of confidence. But you shouldn’t let imposter syndrome hold you back.” She was conscious of the irony as she lectured Antonio about the exact same thing she’d been battling herself. “There’s always going to be a voice in your head whispering that you’re not as good as other people—and maybe even some people in your life will tell you the same thing. But you’ve got to find a way to shut all of that out. Tell that voice in the back of your head to shut up and let you do your work.”
Antonio laughed. “I’ll have to remember that when I’m doing my calculus homework.” He bent over to pull a piece of paper out of his backpack. “I looked up the math requirements for a mechanical engineering degree. Do you think you could go over them with me so I know what I’m getting myself into? Everything makes way more sense when you explain it.”
For the second time in just a few minutes, Mia’s heart swelled. And maybe her head did too a little. But why shouldn’t it? One of her students had just paid her the highest possible compliment. It was a vindication of all the effort she’d put into developing her lesson plans, not to mention every minute she’d spent agonizing over her lectures and practicing them in the mirror.
She stuck out her hand and wiggled her fingers. “Hand it over.” Antonio passed her the paper and she laid it on the desk in front of her before saying, “Hold on a second. I need to do something really quick.” She turned to her laptop and brought up the email she’d composed with her submission to the Annals attached.
Before she could lose her nerve, she hit send.
There. It was done. Out of her hands and out in the world. Subject to the judgment of strangers. It was a little terrifying, but also exhilarating.
Mia turned back to Antonio with a smile. “All right. Let’s see what your future holds.”
And then she started to explain why he was going to love linear algebra.
“It was the most amazing feeling,” Mia told Josh later that night. “I don’t know how to describe it. Like winning the lottery or something. Only not really. It’s hard to explain.”
It was Friday night, so they’d made spaghetti and meatballs together at the farm. Josh had made the sauce from scratch with the last of the fall tomatoes, and Mia had made the meatballs from Birdie’s recipe—under Josh’s supervision.
As they sat down to eat the meal they’d cooked together, Mia had relayed the gist of her conversation with Antonio without revealing the name of the student who’d come to talk to her. Since Josh knew both Antonio and Antonio’s father, Mia didn’t want to betray his confidence, in case he hadn’t shared his career aspirations with his father yet.
Josh grinned as he sprinkled Parmigiano-Reggiano over his spaghetti. “Was it as good as cracking a math problem that’s gone unsolved for decades?”
“Kind of, actually.” Mia accepted the cheese from him and spooned a thick layer over her spaghetti. “It’s a more immediate sort of gratification. More personal.”
“I seem to recall you felt pretty gratified the day you finished working out your proof.” He was cutting up his spaghetti with his knife, a habit that Mia found endearing but would have mortally offended her Italian-American friends back home. She’d teased him about it the first time she’d seen him do it, and he’d shrugged unselfconsciously and said it was the way he’d always eaten his spaghetti.
She shot him a knowing smile. “And I seem to recall you were directly responsible for a lot of