I need some inspiration right now.  Doing 3 courses I often feel like I am sinking.  What the hell was I thinking? 

Anyway, I came across this article that was posted (retweeted) by a science expert I follow on Twitter (BTW, I'm @tomshepp). 

Schwartz, Martin A. (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research.  Journal of Cell Science. 121: 1771.  (http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/121/11/1771).

It is worth a read but here are a couple quotes:

 "If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of actionis to muddle through as best we can".

"What makes it difficultis that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don'tknow what we're doing".

"... we don't do a good enough job of teaching our studentshow to be productively stupid – that is, if we don't feelstupid it means we're not really trying".

"Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice".