My hard work will pay off.

Payment rarely arrives in the currency you invoiced for. You put in four years and get back a different job than the one you were chasing, plus a way of thinking that won't fit on a CV.

Hard work has a lag, and the lag is the part that tests people. Nothing about the tenth week looks different from the ninth.

A cook who has boned out a thousand chickens does it now without looking. She never felt herself getting faster. She arrived one day at a competence she couldn't remember acquiring.

That is what paying off looks like from the inside: unnoticed, then obvious.