Just finished rereading Project Hail Mary again and it’s really interesting that Stratt is not a scientist. She’s an administrator, a politician, a leader. Not a scientist. She’s surrounded by some of the smartest people in the world, and they’re speaking in very science-y terms, and she has no idea what is going on. So what does she do? She turns to Grace and asks him to explain it to her. And he does, he explains the very complicated stuff in a way she, a non-scientist, can understand, because he’s a teacher. That’s what he does. It works very well from a narrative perspective because you, the reader, also don’t know what all this stuff means, so Grace explaining it to Stratt also explains it to you. But I also think maybe this is part of the reason Grace became so important to Project Hail Mary, why Stratt dragged him around everywhere- and she really does take him everywhere with her- not in spite of the fact that he’s a junior high school teacher, but because of it.