At the end of the presentation, the students opened the floor to questions. A man in the back stood up.
He had been a sponsor their work. It was a mission for him: to pass knowledge to the next generation by dropping them into the melée and putting them to work with technologies and software before they otherwise would.
“How did the tools work?” he asked.
One of the students took the mic.
“Fine,” he said. “The tools all worked fine as soon as we figured out how to use them correctly.”
The room erupted in laughter, not only because of the humor of the response but also because of its deep truth.