Birthday Blues

by JS

I suppose I don’t think I’ve come as far in the past year as I wanted to, and in particular the last few months. Perhaps because the rest of my life has worked out so profoundly well, I end up focusing the vagaries of my professional (and really academic) life. Am I producing new knowledge? For that matter, am I able to understand when others do?

A case in point – I’ve been trying to understand a set of technical methods in machine learning called variational methods. The process has been pretty rough, in part because I haven’t found a really rigorous introduction to the calculus of variations (and related applications). And informal descriptions tend to devolve quickly into a lot of special case derivations, ad hoc mathematics, and somewhat lacking discourse.

I’m not quite at the point where I’m willing to dismiss my own inability to appreciate a subject. Maybe that’s a skill one earns with the Ph.D. You get a claim on a field of expertise and a get out of jail free card that says that you don’t have to understand anything else to be productive.

Anyway, I’m sure this kind of cognitive blockage is common. I’ve heard that physicists can spend years understand single equations. Maybe it is uncommon, and reflects a kind of weakness of mind that will only yield more problems down the road. In a sense, by doubting, I suspect I’ve already fallen into a kind of trap. I’ve found it is certainly difficult to get anything done in an environment of doubt.

But what do I know? Today is a new day.