As most MIT students know, UROPs typically begin with a brief interim period where we read up on relevant material pertaining to the research so we can start participating in lab. I did some reading for my summer UROP the other day, and I reached a Eureka moment: I found that I actually understood the material. More than that, I found that a lot of the material was based off things I had learned this past semester.

This isn’t even because I had taken classes related to my major--the only one I took last semester was Toy Product Design. I’ve taken mostly GIRs (general institute requirements). In fact, this past semester, some of the classes I took were the basics: 18.03, 8.02, and 7.013--or Differential Equations, Physics, and Introductory Biology.

Yet I was amused to see that the reading mentioned things I had learned. Differential Equations was a broad presence, as things such as square waves, impedance, and gain showed up. Physics saw its presence in the mention of circuits and filters. And even Biology took part: my class had studied feedforward and feedback loops, which were part of the control theory I had to read up on.

It was such a lightbulb moment, realizing that what we studied was actually applicable to daily life. As much as I complained about the GIRs when I took them, I realized that they do provide a good foundation, a backboard of knowledge which we can then jump off from as we delve into more specific fields.

For most of my life, I’ve gone through classes with the mentality that I should cram this material into my brain, get an A in the class, and then dump out the material to make way for new material from other classes. The mantra was that I would never use this again in my life, so the knowledge doesn’t need to be permanent. Yet I realized that I’ve reached a point in my life where the knowledge we learn in class is useful and applicable to things that we do in the lab or in the workplace. It’s mind-blowing, to say the very least. For one, it’s scary, because this means I actually have to know the material well since this may be stuff I’ll be using years down the line. But it’s also inspiring. I find it refreshing to study and know that I’m learning something useful, not just rote memorization that I won’t remember come next semester.

I might not understand fully everything that is involved in the research papers that my post-doc wrote. Yet I found that I understood bits and pieces of it, the basic concepts taught to me in lecture, and I can combine those pieces to have a broader understanding of the topic. I understand enough to know what I don’t know and read up on those, to piece together some semblance of knowledge from the facts that I had stored up while studying for exams.

I understand enough to know that wow, the stuff that we are learning is actually useful. What a concept.