"All right... how about I give you some examples," she suggests. "Besides the most obvious one of Bella, who is mostly putting herself in the place she fits, which is benevolent sorcerer-empress of the universe in case you were wondering. I'm just giving her the occasional hand there. For a better example: I had this student a few years back who was an absolutely brilliant cryptographer, but cryptography was absolutely the last thing she wanted to do with her life. I had a certain amount of fellow feeling for her, one math genius to another, and I hated to see her heading straight for a career path where learning the subject made her happy but the work was going to make her miserable."

She taps her fingers together in her lap.

"So I asked her about her other hobbies, and she said she liked listening to music, which didn't immediately set any wheels turning. But then I was talking to another friend of mine who was trying for the third time in two years to put a band together. Incredibly talented musician, perpetually disorganized, enthusiastic but bad at follow-through. And I realized that if I put the two of them in a room, they would probably get along really, really well. And she was more than organized enough for the both of them. So I introduced them to each other, and he convinced her to try playing the keyboard, which she took to with all the energy and capacity for mathematical analysis she had been putting into her schoolwork up to that point; they called up the guitarist I'd suggested on this guy's second try, she was willing to give it another shot, and the three of them are now a successful indie rock band."