<p>When I talked to the professor, he told me what his project was and I was (and still am) very interested in it. Now that I'm doing it, I am really wondering if I am qualified to do this. He knew all of the courses I've taken so I don't know why he picked me for this!</p>
<p>He's basically got a very complicated mathematical model that I am supposed to help improve, but I'm really struggling to get a grasp on how it works in the first place, let alone do research to actually improve it. The model uses ideas from 4-5 classes I haven't taken yet. It uses a lot of complicated ideas from probability and statistics as well as optimization on top of all the computer science I need to know.</p>
<p>I'm still in the stage of understanding how it works, and it goes like this: find one thing I'm not familiar with, look it up, find 4 more things I'm not familiar with, look those up, find 4 more things for each of those things I'm not familiar with... etc... it's terrible, and it's totally eating into my study time for my other classes! I'm building a long list of terms I need to learn about.</p>
<p>What should I do? It's a pass/fail thing, if I don't end up being able to contribute much, would he really fail me? I could quit, but I am really interested in his research and want to work with him in the future when I've learned more.</p>
<p>I would just talk to him about it and see what he thinks would be best for you. To me, this sounds like a great learning opportunity and a good thing to have on your resume down the road. Research isn’t meant to be easy, you are solving things that haven’t been solved. But anyways, just talk to the prof about how you feel you are doing so they can decide what is best.</p>
<p>Look, if the professor knew how much you know but gave you the task anyways, that means he thinks it’s reasonable for you to learn what you don’t understand.
Try asking him directly for an explanation. That might save you some trouble.</p>
<p>It sounds to me like he’s trying to push you out of your comfort zone to see what you’re made of, and whether or not you’re capable of dealing with the stress of research. Basically, he wants to see how you tackle the problem… How do you go about gaining an understanding of the existing model, and then what is your path forward on trying to improve the model?</p>
<p>Just keep in the back of your mind that he knows what he’s doing. If you have any real concerns or hit a road block along the way, you can always ask him for some guidance. He know’s you’re not a professional researcher yet… In the long run though, this type of experience will be beneficial for you as it will give you practice becoming a self-sufficient researcher… Which is kind of the point.</p>
<p>Any new researcher is going to have a steep learning curve. That is the nature of the beast, especially since it is vastly different in many respects than most other jobs or classes that a student typically has. In other words, your experience in normal. I would even go as far as to say you are lucky since you are getting something reasonably interesting right off the bat instead of starting with the peon jobs.</p>
<p>This sounds terrific. That’s how it’s done. You go to school to learn how to learn. Now the training wheels are off. </p>
<p>Your mistake is making it your last priority. If you want to go to graduate school, it ought to be your first. </p>
<p>You have the rare opportunity to learn rapidly under the mentorship of your professor. Do the best you can within your time constraints and keep coming back to the problem that you actually have. Show the prof or your mentor if it’s a grad student your list and ask him to help you prioritize your study. You don’t need to master everything, you just need to understand the basic logic for now to see what exactly his models do and what the limitations are. And cheer up. If you stick with it, you will understand a lot and when you take those courses you’ll understand the motivation and be at the top of the class.</p>