I am a new ECE PhD graduate and I never felt more lost in my life. 1) I don’t remember anything I learned during my undergraduate degree. I remember some things, but it feels substantially less than what I knew during that time. 2) I feel slow sometimes; it sometimes takes me a while to figure something out or to look at from a different angle. 3) I am currently working in my field of study but I focus on another field during work after hours. I enjoy the other field as a hobby.
Bottom line is, I don’t feel sharp although I’m in my late 20s. Should I be worried about my future in tech? Or does anyone else go through the same thing ? Do you remember everything from undergrad sharply? Do you ever feel “slow”?
Thanks!
I'm slower. I'm more experienced. I'm doing great.
You say you feel slow and not as sharp. I'd equate this to typing speed. If you were typing 90wpm and got slow and errored more, would that stop a career in tech? I work with a guy who hunt and pecks when typing with two fingers. He is a fantastic developer and doing great.
If you enjoy it and people enjoy working with you and you are productive, then you will be fine.
Feeling slow is definitely familiar, while everybody else seems more than satisfied with my results. I'm still trying to always get better at what I do, but at the same time I remind myself not to sweat it. The internet makes it too easy sometimes to see top performers, and mainly their good aspects. Doing average gets you a long way, and a bit better than average a very long way. Stop comparing yourself to others. Just do your best. It's most probably enough.
Having hobbies that differ from work is something I'd consider healthy.
Do you sleep well? Are you sure?
Do you have a sleep disorder? Are you sure?
For me, answering "are you sure?" on all of those questions involved talking to a sleep specialist and the answer was no. Working through all of those problems was life changing.
I'm not sure I fully understand your worries though. What do you want your future in tech to be? What do you want to accomplish? The key is the drive to build something. Are you motivated enough to succeed? Is your hobby project exciting enough to keep you up at night (or would you rather be watching Netflix)?
Regarding the sharpness - no, I don't feel any less sharp than when I was 20. I don't think the 20 yo version of me would be faster to solve hard research problems I'm struggling with currently, both at work or the side project. Sharpness is not a function of age, it's a function of your current state - physical (exercise, sleep, eat well), emotional (find the drive!), and mental (solve puzzles, read books, talk to smart people, try new things).
> Do you ever feel “slow”?
Very often. I wake up, and feel as if I haven't slept at all. During those times, my memory literally fails me. The other day, I couldn't remember the term "thin provisioning," about which I was drilling a current coworker a few months ago at an interview. So though the concept is trivial to me, I just couldn't find the words to describe it.
And yet, even in that state, I sit down, and code, debug issues, write code... I still get my shit done. I spend less time in the kitchen talking to coworkers, though.
A better question is, why do you feel you shouldn't feel "slow"? What should make you feel "fast" that you've acquired during your couple years of studying?
"I don’t feel sharp"
Don't equate not knowing how to do something with being inept. Making something from scratch that's not been made before is often an adventure into the unknown that requires a lot of trial and error. It's often our job to figure out how to do it. For me, that's the fun part, but the journey to get there can sure make you feel dumb as a bag of hammers.
That's because there are almost always a lot of ways to do it both wrong or better. But the truth is you just need to find one way that does it. "Improvements" are future tense. So you focus on the problem in hand and move along a step at a time.
I've learned to seek help as soon as I get stuck, as opposed to a hardheaded "keep tossing mud to see what sticks" approach. A few days of that can make you feel stupid real good.
It was ego that prevented me from learning that lesson sooner. Ego can take a pounding when you're hard headed. So toss ego aside and start looking for and asking for help as soon as you hit a wall. My experience since is there are very few problems without solutions, or at least partial solutions you can build upon.
You probably do know where to start looking for answers to questions and help for most of the issues you'll ever run into, and that's what will keep the progress going on whatever you're working on.
If you think about it, finding the answers is what you really learned how to do in school, and you still know how to do that, and you always will.
I'll also offer that you work on something for you. Grab a raspberry pi and one of the projects for it that looks fun and diddle with it. It's exercising. It keeps you sharp and builds confidence. Make something and share it.
That said, I've got some Pi projects I did a few years ago that I glance at now and wonder how the hell it works because I forgot, but if I dive back into them it comes back to me.
So just dive in. You'll be welcomed.
Learning seems more like a skill/technique than an aptitude. It's not just grades, but learning in a way that it sticks.