For my STEP signature project, I worked with a math faculty member to investigate similarities between topological spaces. I spent a lot of the time coding to prove lower and upper bounds and search for patterns in data. I also met with my faculty mentor periodically to discuss findings and brainstorm new ways of asking questions.
One of the biggest things that I learned while doing my project is that research is hard. Being good at solving problems in class is completely different from being able to do effective research. I had to learn how to give up on a problem and move to a different sub-problem. Initially, I thought of the goal of research as trying to solve a specific problem, but as I proceeded I realized that the only way that you can really proceed is by trying to solve problems kind of related to what you really want – in the end, the thing you really want may be impossible, or uninteresting, so you need to be willing to explore. In completing this project I learned that the trick is to ask the right questions, and began getting a taste of what research feels like.
Another thing that I learned was that communication is absolutely essential to a successful research project. Trying to fight against a problem on your own is suicide, having someone else’s perspective can really help to clarify a problem. Besides the potential to help other people, communication is really important to not repeating the same work others do. Finally, talking with other people is much more enjoyable than trying to work on your own to solve problems.
I learned the things I learned only through bitter failure. I wasted a lot of time trying to improve the speed of some code to get better lower and upper bounds on a constant and run that code in parallel etcetera. It didn’t take me too much time to realize that the bounds were not going to get much better without a very new technique, but I never thought of a super cool technique, and altogether spent too much time trying to get insignificant improvements. Here is where I banged my head against the wall, and the two main reasons for this foolishness were my lack of experience and my lack of communication of my struggles.
Here is a concrete example of why you need to be able to communicate. I realized that I would not be able to progress much further but did not sufficiently explain my worries. After all, I am just a mere undergraduate and the faculty advisor things that running the code in parallel would lead to big improvements. But it is so important to be able to listen to yourself and make a case, rather than just beat yourself up about being dumb and unable to make said improvements. Honestly my biggest regret was not being able to talk with people very much during this time, I was busy with some other things and so were they, so we didn’t meet up very often or for very long ):.
On the other hand, the meetings were always a good experience, working together and hearing other ideas always made me feel confident that I would be able to do something productive afterwards. This also features the only pictures I took during research, here you can see my faculty advisor explaining some math to me and his stack of books.
The things that I learned from my research help me see how much I still have to learn and inspired me to study more research papers as an undergrad. I got a taste of research and it has made me want to be very prepared for grad school, and learn how I should prepare. This research experience has helped me learn how I need to grow as a person and a scholar. This experience has also given me insight into potential career paths and given me experience with communicating effectively, which is absolutely essential for research, internships, or practically anything that you could want to do in your life.