Is it better to be a natural born genius or to have to work at something?

My history class just reached the Renaissance. For today, we read "The Life of Artists" by Vasari and Machiavelli’s "The Prince". Both the works discuss whether it’s better to be naturally good at something or to have to earn it.

It’s something I’ve thought about a lot. Throughout high school, and now in college, I watched a few lucky peers glide through with minimal effort. I watched kids write papers in their 40-minute lunch period before they were due.

In my favorite example, a friend stole one of his classmate’s posters right before class started and placed his poster pictures on the back of it. He then made the presentation with all of us standing around a table. My teacher loved it.

In contrast, I had spent a week making my poster, writing note cards and planning exactly what I was going to say. My teacher thought it was so-so.

I was always jealous of kids who could just glide. I worked my butt off, and we still got the same grades. I’m still jealous of the kids down the hall who are watching movies while I memorize date after date and read page after page.

Yet at the same time, I don’t know that I would want to be one of them. I like knowing that I earn what I’ve gotten. It’s important to me that I know what it takes to get something.

It would probably be a lot easier if I were a natural-born genius. If I could memorize dates without effort or read a thousand pages in an hour, my life, as a likely history major, would have a lot more free time. But I really don’t think that would be as satisfying.

So now, I’m off to the library, to power through the final sprint of the semester. And the work will be satisfying. But so will the end.