My broken record of arrogance

I keep running a conversation through my head.

Almost every weekday I stop by Janice’s office to look through her homework solutions manual. (I’d rather correct my mistakes on my own than be told after grading that I did something wrong. And I only have a limited solutions manual at home.) I looked through her manual for maybe three minutes. One of her officemates (another grad student) spoke up almost as soon as I closed the book.

HIM: Do you ever get any problems wrong?

ME: Oh, yeah. I just look through this [the solutions manual] and then make note of what I messed up, and then I go and correct it later.

HIM: Well you just usually sit here for a few minutes and then you’re done and I’m like, “That guy never does any problems wrong!”

ME: Well...it’s all pretty intuitive.

HIM: I guess my intuition’s broken, then!

ME: Oh I mean, you do six problems that are all pretty similar and you are able to make sure you did them correctly, and then when you check on some of the other ones, it’s kind of like, “Oh, I see what I did wrong,” and then you just correct it.

I must have sounded so arrogant. Intuitive? That’s not necessarily the right word to use for what I was talking about, and I think that made me seem smarter at calculus than I actually am. I mean, this guy is a grad student! So...what do I have on him? Nothing. But it’s one of those conversations where you replay it over and over in your head, wishing things had gone a little better.