There is no problem in rediscovering the wheel
There is no problem in rediscovering the wheel if you have never discovered it.
The school system was created to prepare the students to learn how to remember the “correct” solution for a problem given. There is no stimulus to observe and delimit new problems or come up with a new solution, in special if it is less eficcient than the one given by the teacher.
When some of those students arrive at a research graduate level, the goal subtly changes. Now, the student needs to create something new: identify a new problem, or develop q better solution for a problem already solved. Students arrive with that in mind and may think: “But how do I start?”. There was no previous preparation for such journey but still, if you enter in the degree program it means you are prepared, aren’t you?
The moment the student enter in a Research Degree may have a big influence in the student’s mindset. Carol S. Dweck explains in the Book “Mindset, the new psychology of success” that there are two types of mindset: the fixed mindset, and the growth mindset. The fixed mindset is when a person feels ready for the challenges, as if there is no more to learn and only to apply the inate skills. In opposition, in the growth mindset the person is always trying to learn and improve all its skills, all the time. If someone from the fixed mindset fail, the person feels as a failure. The person who has already all skills required cannot fail, right? Otherwise it does not have the skills and is not suitable for the challenge. In the growth mindset, in case of fail, the person sees the failure as an opportunity to learn and to improve itself. If something goes wrong is because it was not ready yet, but it will learn and try again.
When someone pass through the hard challenge to enter in an undergraduate course, the mindset may got affected. You are the best over all students who tried! You have the skills! You are! This can easily put someone on the fixed mindset, but the first exams put all this idea into challenge very soon. You were bad in the exam, or you learn or you are out. What will it be? This can be a good moment to put the student again in a growth mindset if posed in a good way, because at the end of the day you are a student, aren’t you?
Things happen a little differently in a reserach program, such as a PhD. You enter, you passed, you are good, now you will create something new never seen before. And here we go for the fixed mindset again. But now without easy return. There are no tests, there are (supposedly) no steps to follow, until the moment comes. Where are the papers you cannot create? Where is the thesis you cannot write? Where is the presentation you cannot organize? And the answer may be: wait, I could not find any new problem or idea for a revolution, I need more time. More time, more stress, less time, less motivation. And it happens so fast that when one realizes it has passed two, three, four years and things just got worse and worse.
With all this pressure on novelty and good results, a student may often forget the most important thing. The goal of any student is to learn, regardless of the degree. In the pressure for novelty, students do not try to “rediscover the wheel”, because the wheel is too old, it is not novelty. But the information that one always forget is that the wheel may have been discovered a long time ago, but if you do not know how it works then how to improve it? How to foreseen the unsolved problems?
The solution? No one enter in a PhD because is ready to write a thesis, otherwise one would start the PhD by writing the Thesis. One stars a PhD to learn how to write a thesis, often with no indication on how to go for it. Thus the first step would be mindset change. Pose yourself in the growth mindset, see yourself as a student, and do reinvent the wheel. Go for the basics of your topic and build the ideas and the tools yourself from scratch, start by studying one, and only one, state-of-the-art solution. Understand it deeply, rebuild it, verify what is missing, and goes from that. Every house needs a foundation. Everyday ask yourself: What did I learn today that I did not know yesterday? It may still not give you a thesis, but it may be the first step to arrive there.
I would like to know what you think about that. Please leave you opinion at the commens below.
*All pictures in this article are from Pixabay.