4 milli-blog - new years resolutions - turning myself into a school
#update
parents:: milli-blog
daily note:: 2025-01-03
Every winter break I end up with these really lofty goals for myself. Mostly learning things. A collection of all the cool ideas I encounter during the semester that I don't have time to do then. And so I appease (and lie to) myself by putting it onto a list of "things I'll do over winter break".
When I sit down to actually learn about something though... it's often hard to find that excitement I had when I was putting it down (wanting to achieve X often feels almost as good as achieving X).
Sometimes, it's because, well, maybe it actually just isn't worth it.
Other times, it's because of a disconnect between the goal and the task. Sitting down to learn algebraic geometry and see things like Zariski topology, it feels so far removed from the ultimate goal of understanding how and why algebraic geometry shows up all over the place (in particular towards understanding this kahler package business).
The natural solution to this is to create a curriculum for myself. A list of this then that then that then that that starts at the beginning and ends with that shining trophy that had first caught my eye. There's a few things missing from this, though:
- Timing/effort: it's hard to tell how much time/effort this will take, as I have a high level of uncertainty over how difficult material will be for me to grasp.
- Trust: I don't know if this curriculum is "correct."
- Adaptivity and micro decisions: along the way, I'll run into all sort of possible directions along which to spend more or less time. It gets tiring to make all of those decisions all the time. So that it becomes a burden to learn, not really because the learning is hard, but because decisions are hard.
There's also often a more fundamental problem: uncertainty over whether that trophy is worth it. In the sense of, if I succeed in understanding the kahler package, what will it do for me? For the romantic in me, these topics I'd like to learn about are towards this vague idea of "understanding the conspiracies underlying mathematics." But the more pragmatic part of my brain is telling me that I should be focusing on only learning what will lead to concretely useful tools or ideas for research directions.
Okay, I've reached my 20 minute limit, time to wrap up.
The initial idea I'd started off with for this milli-post was that of learning requires creating. Instead of making learning goals, Il'l make creation goals. Also because teaching is the best way to learn.
New years resolution
- Spend an hour at least every other day writing math stuff. This requires me to do some outlining/planning as to what I'd like to be able to convey.
- Because in writing short stories I observed that it helps to write by switching between writing and outlining, and allowing jumping around. I'm hoping that writing will help me balance between planning and adaptivity.
Next up
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- This is something I need to grapple with next semester. Do I take more classes, which help with the effort and trust aspects but hurt the adaptivity aspect? Or do I focus on learning that's more self directed, so that I can tailor it more to my research and to what I need?
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