Stagnation and Growth¶
This is a topic that has taken up a lot of real estate in my mind this year. I’m coming to the end of my university life and I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which I have grown over the past three years.
To be honest, the biggest thing I’ve come to realise is that I am extremely grateful to my high school and opportunities around SG for all the opportunities that I’ve had to do things to a high level. So much so that when I do things now, the first thing I think of is just “let’s do what we did in RI”. Be it the way I approach studying or the way that I lead, a lot of it has been reviews or just applying the same thing in different scenarios.
It’s come back in a different way. A couple months back my friend was telling me about his FYP as he’s on a three-year course, and so I took some time to look through the FYPs on offer. I don’t think I can share the list of project proposals here, but there was a project on multistatic array sensing systems which was very similar to a signal processing project that I did in 2016 (admittedly, it didn’t go great, and I kind of sucked, but everything and everyone starts somewhere). I remember reading that list, going back, and wanting to just curl up and cry. After all these years?
It’s not like this is an uncommon occurrence: I’ve found myself going back to notes that I took in 2016 and 2017 to study modules – specifically digital signal processing, EM, and any math topic that needed linalg. I think the difference now is that I’m more comfortable/confident looking at it, but then again, I think if I had eight to nine years to look at something that’s taught at a level that’s not too complex I probably should be able to understand it.
Of course, there’s the question: why take these modules if they’re a recap? Some of this is down to module choice: I wasn’t able to choose modules in the first two years, but more obviously this is a downside of needing to optimise for grades. It would be ideal if grades were not a thing and I could study what I wanted – and I do that in my own time – but Goodhart’s law means that the measure has now become a target for me and therefore is not great in assessing my learning.
Also, this is not just the case for academic modules, but also for extracurricular activities. I often find myself drawing on past experiences and yes, that’s what past experiences are for – but it doesn’t mean doing a less complete or weaker version of what I’ve done before, with light adjustments for the UK university context and the respective values that suit the organisation the best. Regardless, that’s what I did, and it does feel weird to receive praise for what’s objectively a much worse job that you are used to.
An important caveat: nothing of what I said is said with the intention to imply any form of intellectual arrogance. I’m very aware that things are taught at a very superficial level in undergrad or in school; there are many nuances that are not considered and taken into account and I know that there’s a lot that I don’t know. I don’t want the impression from this post to be that he thinks he knows everything. However, I can’t shake the feeling that there must be more.
Recently we did a concert where we played music from Korngold’s Sea Hawk. It was really nice film music and the music went from scene to scene, but when it ended, there was a full 10 seconds of silence – even though it ended on the same triumphant note that all film music scores with a good ending end on. I don’t know what the audience was thinking, but it’s quite a short piece, so they very well might have expected more – more twists, more emotions, more playing. I think that’s the same as how I feel about my university life at large.
I am in a privileged position to have had the industrial experience to provide that “more” that university did not necessarily give. Not more content, because that can always be done with a bit more studying; but more paradigms of thoughts, more ways to come at a problem, more awareness of different tradeoffs. However, it feels quite surreal that most of the growth that I’ve experienced at university have come during the vacation periods.
Also, I’m very much aware that this is not necessarily the experience of others going through university. I do not want to diminish or trivialise these experiences in any way, and I will always act with empathy in that regard. However, it’s important for me to respect and express how I’m feeling in a constructive way.
In my handover, I told the person taking over me in one of my roles to value distance as it creates objectivity – as I know her to be a person who focuses on building closeness in interpersonal relationships. I think that the advice I gave her might be true to me. Progress is not always visible. Maybe this is one of those periods that the amount of progress will only surface with some distance from the situation that I’m in.
A lot of this also informs how I am planning to take the next year: it’s time to take big swings. I’m okay with not necessarily hitting on every swing, but I think it’s important that at least I have given it a good effort. I would very much like to find that ‘more’ in a way that develops new perspectives, paradigms and purpose.