grace is such an unreliable narrator because wdym you think you're underqualified? even before he boarded the hail mary, his “normal life” was literally being one of the people saving the planet and quickly became stratt's right hand.
he has a phd in molecular biology, he named astrophage, he was in the room when astrophage was identified and explained, he helped figure out how it feeds on stellar energy, he contributed to figuring how it reproduces so it could even be studied in labs. and he didn’t just observe it, he helped build the actual scientific understanding of it from the ground up.
and the crazy part is even his colleagues are clearly in awe of him?? they talk to him like he’s this genius who’s miles ahead of them and he just brushes it off like it’s nothing.
bro is not “just a middle school science teacher who got lucky,” he’s the guy everyone turns to when the problem is literally “the sun is dying” and somehow he still thinks he’s the least qualified person in the room.
