I got bored in a genetics lecture a couple of days ago and started to doodle a graph of my perceived biology knowledge and reasoning over the course of my life. “Perceived biology knowledge” is in arbitrary units, and parts of my life are binned into “childhood,” “high school,” “college,” and “grad school” along the x-axis. One caveat is that I am perhaps too biased to reliably perceive my own knowledge and reasoning at any point in my life. Memory is also imperfect, so the early life data-points are probably hard to believe.
In spite of the problems with trying to turn this type of subjective introspection into something data-driven, the general trajectory of the plot and the relative magnitudes within the x-axis bins are likely reliable: the biphasic linear growth through childhood and high school seems reasonable, and the large gains going into college and grad school should be unsurprising to anyone who has had the pleasure of going through those experiences. In fact, one of the major conclusions that I draw from this thought experiment is the effect of disruptive events on my scientific reasoning and knowledge. I was learning a bit and growing throughout childhood and high school, but the real gains came from first going to college–and getting thrown into the deep end with rigorous science classes first semester–and the similarly disruptive first year of grad school. This seems to argue in favor of the conventional wisdom that getting out of one’s comfort zone is the only way to truly grow and improve. To extrapolate a little advice out of this: Don’t be afraid to be in over your head, I guess.
developingbio 