4.5 The Struggle
It never gets any easier. You just have to love it. – Professor Suse Broyde
People get good at R, linux, biochemistry, trombone, whatever by spending years in the practice of those skills, facts, and ideas. To develop this expertise, you must simply attempt problems. Some say this is a productive way to learn things, to engage in a productive struggle. It’s this way for R, same thing for research.
How challenging should things be? Some folks offer the simple guidance that you should be doing just fine 1/3rd of the time, completely confident to the point of boredom for another 1/3rd, and struggling completely out of your depth for another 1/3rd. These are arbitrary numbers, but the point is that you should be struggling with new things from a solid basis of routine skill. Build up the basics, and practice them in your work, by applying your new skills.
The biggest advantage you can build for yourself may be in maintaining a learning community. It’s really handy to have supervisors, co-workers, and friends who you can go to for help. Additionally, by helping others you hone the skills that are the basis for your further development. A teacher’s skills often dull without students. Engaging in a learning community as a teacher or student, and switching roles between these, builds an ecology of learning that helps everyone.
Through this summer, try to do that for and with each other!
Check out the end of the worksheet document for problems to attempt in this section.
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