Ankur Moitra told me that innovative mathematicians will spend many of their formative years laboring to reproduce known results.

Junot Diaz told me that it would be more productive for my writing career to endure a shitty, tough job for four years rather than to obtain a degree in writing.

Both of these experts understood how grappling with reality is the essential instructive experience. 

We should celebrate that child experimentally mixing two different hot chocolate flavors, even (and perhaps especially) when the resultant drink tastes like dirt.