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A few weeks ago, I had lunch with my advisor and this guy named Gregory Abowd - an associate prof. at georgia tech. They had a nice conversation, and I just sat and ate.

Something that struck me was the level of the topics of their discussion. They didn't talk about specific research results or technical details or stuff like that, it was more like wide scoping statements and opinions about the state of this field and that field and what they thought about this research direction, and that research direction. And I realized that there's no way I'd be able to talk about things like that. I could yammer on about this part of a project I'd been working on or that class I took last fall, but ask me to give my opinion on the state of computing research and my eyes will glaze over.

So I guess what it came down to was that their views of CS and HCI research are just much wider than mine right now. And even after being neck deep in this stuff for the last five years, I still don't feel like I have any kind of grasp on what's going on. Definitely know a whole lot more than I did last year, but still feel like I have years and years more to go. I don't wonder anymore why it takes so long to get a phd... sometimes I wonder if four or five more years is going to be long enough. scary.

They say that Hilbert was the last great mathematician, in that he was that last one to really have a deep understanding of every branch of mathematics. Supposedly, nowadays the field is just too big for any one person to be an expert in all of it, even if you spent your entire life studying. That's kinda the way I feel about CS right now... there's such so much to know that it'd be foolish to try and learn it all. Daunting...



Re: bigger pictures
Posted 1 week, 5 days ago by jackie • • Reply



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