Jason Liu's Personal Website

*Sigh* Not that I think anyone ever reads this blog, but since I do have date-stamps going on these entries, I figure I should probably write something or other, since it has been more than two-and-a-half months since my last entry....

I'm starting to realize how incredibly ignorant I still am, and how ignorant I will always be. Going through my Master's program and doing research, I often feel as if the whole of human experience is weighing down on my brain cells... I'm not sure how it is for other people digging through the massive volumes of papers put out in the various IEEE publications, but that's certainly how I feel.

After jumping head-first into the world of academic research, I have learned that research is not just simply all about "finding the answers" — because in the realm of research, before you can find the answers, you have to ask the questions. And not just any questions, either. They have to be the right questions. The questions might well be ones that others have asked before, but that's okay as long as no good solutions have been found, because this is where the search for the answers can begin. So long as you think that you can find an answer that solves a question that either no one has asked before, or is a better solution than all other solutions so far conceived, then you're in business. Anything less, and you might as well just forget about it. Research is definitely not for the weak-stomached, the faint-hearted, or the easily frustrated.

In the end, I guess engineering research is really all about finding creative methods and clever solutions to practical problems. Unfortunately, I've been feeling a distinct lack of both creativity and cleverness lately. Anyone out there have any excess lying around they'd like to give me?