He corrected his error. He finished the problem. When he checked his final answer against the manual, it matched perfectly. But this time, the match felt like a handshake, not a surrender. He had walked through the fog guided by the beam, but he had steered the ship himself.
The Lighthouse and the Fog
"But," she continued, "the solutions manual is not the lighthouse. It is the beam of light from the lighthouse. It doesn't move your ship for you. It simply shows you where the rocks are." Electromagnetic Fields And Waves Iskander Solutions Manual
"Once you understand the given solution," she smiled, "change the problem. The manual says the wave is polarized parallel to the plane of incidence. What if it's perpendicular? The manual's answer becomes your starting point for a new adventure." He corrected his error