Dr. John Watson is sidekick to the great and famous Sherlock Holmes, as well as his biographer, in the well-known short stories and novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As such, he must improve and employ his powers of observation and deduction, though obviously never to the degree that Holmes does. Watson is not, as often portrayed in the movies, a bumbler or an oaf. He is a reasonably intelligent man in the company of the genius Holmes.
This story parallels my time in the university, where I will reason my way through various texts in the company of my professors and the brilliant classmates toward whom I gravitate. I will, inevitably, write a lot as well. Knowing the stories written by Doyle, I realize that this means I can still have a successful university career without achieving the heights of knowledge reached by my professors or more-intelligent classmates. It also gives me a glimpse into how genius works when I encounter it. Finally, it provides me with the scientific and investigative worldview that I find most comforting: with enough data, and enough power to process it, a person can discover the cause of any past event and predict any event in the future.
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