I think my biggest gripe about my education has been how quickly I lose it all. Every now and then, I like to read research papers for fun and I’m always disappointed at how quickly I fall out of the know. Our school system makes you optimize for reading in lots of data, but never really storing it for longer than a 3 hours final.
For example, I’ve been trying to figure out the big differences between irradiance caching and photon mapping. I know what they do differently, but I have sort of forgot why one might do better in one situation and not the other. This may trace back to my discomfort with fundamental concepts of radiometry. Something I understood at one point, but have since lost touch with.
I’m not sure how long it takes me to forget something. But, I was proud today because I did not completely forget what I learned last quarter. I took a class on Fourier analysis and thankfully, some of it has stuck! I guess if anything sticks, it might as well be mathematics that has its fingers in both the theoretical side and the applied side.
What worries me is when I go off into the real world, away from academia, how will I ever keep stuff in my head? And how will I ever learn new things? Maybe you don’t need to when you’re out there. Maybe.
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