Doing research with a professor, etc.

differential
Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:40:56 +0000

It’s not done in a few weeks days. It’s done over months and years. In most cases, the students did a lot of background work, and a lot of that stuff most people call boring, like oggling wikipedia math for hours every night or playing w/ mathematica or running gels in the lab. That’s why RSI, etc kids are successful, RSI didn’t magically make them win, they already had a background sufficient to get them the win. Don’t try to do a siemens/intel project in a few days or weeks. It won’t happen. Do do a project to learn about science/mathematics/engineering/technology. It’s not worth it just to win.

PS: The originality factor is a difficult line to argue. Science builds on itself, so in almost every case today, the research builds on previous work. At this stage whether the kid does all the work and understands it is just as important as coming up with the idea (and if you know your field well, you will be staying on top of ideas and having new ones all the time).