March 15, 2009

Feeling Stupid

Via a card on PostSecret about getting a PhD, comes this link to The Importance of Stupidity in Science. I think it's not just important in science, but in other creative areas or relationships. If you knew everything, what fun would that be? We demonstrate our ineffectiveness, or ignorance, or lack of mastery of some aspect, and then rectify the lack. Recently I've been playing music again, but a different kind than I've ever done before, and have had to try some new things and learn some new skills. One of the guys in the group gave me a pep talk about something I was struggling with, and while that was nice, what I said to him was that the feeling of incompetence was actually a good thing. I actually needed to feel some awkwardness, and live with it, and figure out how to get through it, and that was the best part. It's all about solving the puzzle, and sometimes we need help and sometimes we don't, but stupidity is the starting point of new and exciting things.

Posted by binky at March 15, 2009 11:15 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Random Thoughts | Science


Comments

Being a post secret fan, I actually sympathized with that card yesterday. I agree that we go to school to get educated... to LEARN things. But at the same time, the politics of grad school is what makes you feel stupid and incompetent. Like profs making comments to you about your personal life in an effort to make you feel inadequate or having to deal with condescending assholes, ahem, cohort memebers, who think they know everything but really don't. That's what really made me feel stupid in grad school, not my grades or what I was grasping.

Posted by: kikimonster at March 16, 2009 11:02 AM | PERMALINK
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