Thus, after finishing high school, I started with high

Host: The snow had just begun to fall, thin flakes of white drifting through the yellow glow of street lamps. The university courtyard was empty, except for the faint echo of footsteps against the stone path. Inside an old laboratory café — the kind tucked beneath libraries and lecture halls — the air was warm with the scent of coffee, chalk, and old wood.

Host: Jack sat at a long table near the window, his hands wrapped around a mug still steaming. The raincoat hung beside him, drops melting into puddles below. Across from him, Jeeny opened a small notebook, her fingers stained faintly with ink and hope. The walls were lined with portraits of scientists — Einstein, Pauli, and at the far end, a young Richard Ernst, his eyes caught mid-dream.

Host: Outside, the snow deepened, like a soft curtain between the world and their conversation.

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “He said this when talking about the start of his journey: ‘Thus, after finishing high school, I started with high expectations and enthusiasm to study chemistry at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.’ Can you feel it, Jack? That kind of pure excitement — the kind you only have once in your life.”

Jack: (dryly) “Enthusiasm is easy when you don’t know what’s waiting for you. Youth runs on delusion and caffeine.”

Jeeny: “No — it runs on faith. Faith that the world will meet your curiosity halfway.”

Jack: (sipping his coffee) “Curiosity doesn’t guarantee meaning. Ernst probably walked into those halls thinking the universe owed him answers. What he got instead was years of equations, dead ends, and loneliness in labs.”

Jeeny: “And yet, that same loneliness gave us NMR spectroscopy — a discovery that changed medicine, chemistry, even the way we see molecules. You call it struggle; I call it transformation.”

Host: The fireplace near the back crackled, the orange light spilling across the wooden floor, making their faces glow like two shadows caught between youth and age, idealism and reason.

Jack: “You think everyone’s meant to be Richard Ernst? Most people who start with ‘high expectations’ end up disappointed. You know what enthusiasm really is? Ignorance in its most poetic form.”

Jeeny: “And yet, without that ignorance, no one would ever dare begin. Every breakthrough starts with someone naïve enough to think they can find truth where others gave up.”

Jack: “Or foolish enough to waste their lives chasing it.”

Jeeny: “Would you rather live certain and small, or uncertain and infinite?”

Host: A faint smile tugged at Jack’s mouth, though his eyes stayed cold, the kind that had seen too many dreams burn out before they ever shone.

Jack: “You always romanticize struggle. You think every sleepless night leads to greatness. But for most people, it just leads to burnout.”

Jeeny: “No. It leads to meaning. Even if you fail, you lived fully — awake, curious, human.”

Host: A group of students passed by the window, their laughter bright, carefree, echoing through the courtyard like a memory of a time when the world still felt possible. Jeeny watched them, her expression soft, nostalgic.

Jeeny: “Do you remember your first semester, Jack? That feeling that the world was too big and too kind to ever betray you?”

Jack: “Yeah. I remember thinking I’d change the world. Then the world changed me first.”

Jeeny: “That’s what happens when you stop believing.”

Jack: “No — that’s what happens when you start seeing.”

Host: He leaned back, his grey eyes catching the flicker of firelight, their steel now tinted with a quiet sadness — the kind that only comes from knowing too much.

Jeeny: “Richard Ernst didn’t have guarantees either. He once said his work was full of failures, that most of his time was spent ‘in the dark.’ But he kept going. Because that’s what science — and life — are. A devotion to what may never answer you back.”

Jack: “That’s the difference between you and me. You see devotion. I see addiction. Humanity’s addiction to meaning — to thinking everything has to be worth something.”

Jeeny: “But what’s wrong with that, Jack? Isn’t meaning what keeps us alive?”

Jack: “No. Survival keeps us alive. Meaning just keeps us busy.”

Jeeny: “You don’t believe that.”

Jack: (pauses) “I didn’t always.”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked, the hands moving with the slow dignity of time itself — steady, uncaring. The snow outside thickened, the courtyard lights now dim halos in the white fog.

Host: Jeeny closed her notebook, folding it like a wing. Her voice grew softer, the kind that cuts deeper because it no longer fights.

Jeeny: “Jack, do you know why Ernst started studying chemistry? It wasn’t fame or money. It was curiosity — that small, simple flame that never asks permission to burn. That’s what I admire: not success, but sincerity.”

Jack: “Sincerity doesn’t build Nobel Prizes.”

Jeeny: “But it builds souls.”

Host: He looked at her for a long moment, the space between them filled with the sound of fire and falling snow — the slow music of two truths refusing to surrender.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that first spark matters more than what comes after. I just… I don’t know when mine went out.”

Jeeny: “It didn’t. You just stopped feeding it.”

Host: The silence that followed was gentle, almost sacred — the kind that feels like an answer.

Host: Jack stood, walked to the window, and stared out at the snow-covered square. The students were gone now, their footprints already vanishing under new flakes — like the past being erased and rewritten at once.

Jack: “You know, when I first came here, I used to think knowledge was everything. Equations, data, proofs. But Ernst… maybe he knew something I didn’t. That it’s not about finding all the answers, but about loving the search.”

Jeeny: (smiling) “Exactly. The search is what makes us human. The moment you stop asking, you stop becoming.”

Jack: “So enthusiasm isn’t naivety?”

Jeeny: “No. It’s courage disguised as youth.”

Host: He turned, and in that moment, something in his face — once hard, pragmatic, defended — had softened. It was as though he had rediscovered a version of himself that still believed in beginnings.

Jack: “Funny, isn’t it? We spend our whole lives trying to go back to that first day — when everything felt possible.”

Jeeny: “And maybe that’s the secret. We never really leave that day behind. It’s just buried under years of fear and realism.”

Host: The fire crackled, casting small sparks that rose and disappeared into the chimney, like thoughts drifting toward sky.

Host: Jack walked back, sat down again, his voice now quiet, the edges worn down by memory.

Jack: “So, Ernst started his journey with high expectations. Maybe that’s all any of us can do — start. And keep starting, even when we fail.”

Jeeny: “Yes. Because beginnings aren’t a phase. They’re a choice. Every day you wake up and decide to still believe — that’s another start.”

Host: Outside, the snow had stopped. The sky was clear now, stars faintly visible above the spires of the university. The world, blanketed in white, seemed momentarily new, as if the universe itself had been reborn.

Host: Jeeny stood, pulling her scarf around her neck, and smiled — that kind of smile that says she already knows how the story ends.

Jeeny: “You see, Jack? It was never about chemistry. It was about curiosity. Ernst didn’t just study molecules. He studied wonder.”

Jack: (grinning faintly) “And maybe wonder was the real formula all along.”

Host: They walked out together, the doorbell ringing softly behind them. The camera would pan upward, catching the snowflakes falling slower now, the light from the laboratory windows glowing like lanterns in a quiet universe.

Host: And in that light, the quote lived again —
“Thus, after finishing high school, I started with high expectations and enthusiasm to study chemistry at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.”

Host: For in every beginning, there is faith — and in every faith, the quiet alchemy of becoming.