Hunger and thirsty
An ordinary student in scientific department may not possess the such enormous hunger towards scientific knowledge. But it is not the case for me. Because I experienced famine when I spent my first two years in university in a foreign language department. How I tried to select the advanced mathematics course but only to find that all inflict with my assigned Japanese courses. So at that time I was almost desperate, and one can imagine how joyful it would be for me to have the chance to learn scientific subjects.
Honor courses
In the School of Life Science, where I later transferred, students are encouraged to learn more scientific courses like algebra, optics, mechanics, electro-magnetics, organic chemistry and so on. What's more, we are prompted to take honor course rather than that B class courses. The A class courses are intended for students who major in certain subjects, so they have higher requirements and thus better training systems. I myself have benefited from such courses, since they do offer a solid basis for my future research career.
Elegant learning
But I was not learning elegantly. It normal to have a hard time in the honor courses. And such stress piled up before mid-term or final exam comes. At that time, I often felt it a feeling bad enough and even made me want to quit the learning. This bothers my enjoyment on learning knowledge.
To solve this problem, I think I must have struggled over a long time. One day, some time before the mid-term of Physical Mathematics, I was so nervous that I later had a talk with myself. It was at that time, I determined several principles concerning learning.
1| Grades are not the most important things.
This point turns out to be the most fundamental one. Students in the School of Life Sciences are ofter concerned about their grades. Firstly, these will largely determine whether and what kind of scholarship they can get. It is a case of money and academic achievement. For scholarships will further help other aspects of academic development like applying for a PhD school. Secondly, these will influence the chance that we are get admitted to famous foreign universities. Among the students in China, who major in biology during the first two decades in this century, there is a trend to pursue PhD degree in foreign established universities. It is quite reasonable in fact, as America and Europe have been leading the researches in this area. We go to famous universities to get better trained thus lay fundation for great work in the future.
Knowing that Grades will influence our application for PhD degree, why I still say grades are not so important. Because universities not only look at the grades but also other aspects of the applicant. And what they expect from students with excellent grades is their outstanding thinking and capacity. Grades cannot say everything.
2| I should learn the science solidly
Many of my contemporaries pay attention to get more grades or are prompted by exams rather than learning and using knowledge itself. I told myself that learn science solidly is more important than grades. While grades do reflect our mastery of knowledge to certain extent, it did not reflect so honestly.
There are several aspects of concentrating only on grades. Firstly, students tend to push themselves to learn the knowledge that the teacher required in the exam. The part that are out of the scope of exam tend to be neglected. This is not a good thing as we may actually need it in the future. Secondly, to get good grades, we focus on doing the exercises assigned by the teacher or that similar with the level of exam. We have no time to pay attention to other more intriguing problems as they won't be examined at all. However, the exercise problems are often constrained in several types, and are often far from the actual practice. Once we face some problem in practice, we may not even recall any methods to work with. Thirdly, exercise problems are in most cases superfacial. Superfacial here means that they did not involve the philosophy and underlying mechanism. Yet learning the latter two is actually the key joy.
3| GRE Subject Physics
As I have finished the GRE general and TOEFL test for future application, recently I am considering something others to challenge with. One is the GRE Subject test which aims to prove the students' capacity on certain subjects. I have taken lots of courses in Physics, so I bet I can have a try on the test. When I decided this, things suddenly became different for me.
In a sudden, things like grades that have once upon a time intrigued my a lot, now seems to be fading away. Now the most key factor became the mastery of the knowledge. So I found out now that, before an exam I would still be nervous, but now the source is not whether I can do well in the exam but whether I have learned the course well enough. Sometimes when we change our aim, we have a totally different view towards life.
4| Learning elegantly
So when did I found out eventually that I was not learning elegantly? It was before the mid-term of Modern Physics course, when I and my friends were both cramming for the test, I found I was not gentle enough on the learning issue. I seemed to be more nervous when I found out that she knew more and understood certain phenomena in the course. Maybe this is called the peer pressure. But why should I feel so nervous and even envious on finding others learning better than me.
I do not like such feeling, so instead I propose another way of leaning, that focusing more on knowledge rather than outside pressure. We should learn elegantly, not pushing ourselves too much. The beauty of science cannot be pushed and mastered under anxious conditions. I bet so is our research, it should be carried out elegantly.