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A Blueprint for Genius

By: Michael Higgins (School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Eng.)
Competition Year: 2017
Votes (7) | Comments (2)
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If I tighten my focus I can just about get at,
How that implies this, and this leads to that.
This concept I’m struggling to get out of these pages,
When given all the assumptions and working-out stages,
I wonder in earnest over a despondent abyss,
“How on Earth did anyone come up with this?”

In these hours of defeat we need reminding of our reason.
I dreamed of the greatest academic honour, many since a season.
Yet the esteemed monikers scribed in history’s records
Surely can’t have been stumped two weeks into this course.
All want to, and can, improve the lives of those immediate
But to help millions it requires one special ingredient:
Genius.

You can get so far being able to find a log and integrate,
But there’s an unyielding barrier between we and the great:
It takes an additional core to your neurology,
To be able to see what doesn’t seem to be.
An unexpected link, added term, or realisation,
From an unsightly mess of numbers, to an exquisite correlation
Not content with ticking boxes but pondering beyond
Maybe a little pride and the need to belong
At the apogee of history. Everyone would find time
For Darwin, Curie, Newton, Einstein.
Diligence, need for truth, dissatisfaction with the so-so.
The Goldilocks guidance that turns prodigy to virtuoso.

But not every legend is written in this ink,
All it takes is to find one missing link:
The new relativity; a cure for AIDS;
Or a millennium problem would win this accolade.
Maybe I could get lucky, pick a branch to lecture
And then find that path proves an age-old conjecture.
I could be one of the lucky second grade scholars
Not all the best goals are scored by the best footballers.
A jammy sod who’s wangled his name next to Euler and Gauss
Has still improved our world even lacking the same nous.

And who knows, if willing to take such risks
I could indeed find myself, in good fortune, on Desert Island Discs.
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Kinluek:
absolutely genius!
Kinluek:
absolutely genius!