Oh, this is so true. Nice share, BlackDog!
When I was starting to do leather work (it's what I do in my day job), I probably threw away half the leather I started with. I made huge mistakes. I made little mistakes. I had to re-design to make things fit. My work looked clunky. I didn't know how to use the equipment. I felt awkward and clumsy. I was afraid of some of the tools. I didn't have a fluid, gut level understanding of the skills I was learning. There were times I really wanted to quit because my ability to do things fell far short of my expectations, just as Ira Glass explained.
But eventually the the projects I completed started to look pretty okay. Consistently decent, nicely designed, and well constructed. And then they started to look better than okay, consistently and reliably. When I realized I was able to use techniques with ease that a few years earlier would have made me worry and procrastinate, well, then I figured I'd finally survived my apprenticeship. It was a good feeling.