The Problem, the Cloud, and the Solution
Check this link to relate to what I’m going to talk about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1U26PLiXjM
Uri Alon’s talk entitled, “ Why truly innovative science demands a leap into the unknown”, tackles his experience during his PhD and how he somewhat lost hope because all his research results are far from his expected results and also he talked about what he learned in that process.
What I was able to learn from Uri’s talk is that research is never a direct path. Research is a long process wherein most of the times your results do not follow your hypothesis and in this process you will learn that there are better solutions to your stated problem and you will stick with this solution because it is better than your previous solution. His illustration about A, B, C and a cloud is what explained this even better. He said that A is your problem, B is your initial solution but expecting that there will be a straight path from A to B is not true, because in your research you will experiment to come up to a solution, represented by loops and loops and loops, until you reach a point where you get stuck in a cloud. Now what you can do in that cloud is to get lost in it, or meditate in it, or relax in it. However, being stuck in that cloud is not a bad thing, for you can get a new and better solution, C, than your first one and what you will do is you will experiment again and again until you reach C.
I guess it is safe to say that almost all researchers have encountered that ‘caught in the cloud’ moment and I most certainly may not escape it but at least I will learn a lesson from it. As a BS Biology student who will be working on my thesis soon, I found this talk very helpful. It was able to show me that in my study I will encounter problems and it also taught me that I should not give up because these problems create another solution which might be better than my initial solution. This talk has great lessons for those who want to be researchers in the future, and we should always remember never to give up because in one way or another we will be able to find the solution, we just have to try and try and try.
