What’s worse is when you have an idea, don’t have any idea how to pursue it because you’re not a professional [career] and don’t have experience making whatever it is; and then you see a successful paper or product months or years later about that exact same idea, made by someone who actually knows what they’re doing.
It’s frustrating yet validating. Frustrating because, “that could have been me”, validating because “I thought of the idea before it’d been developed too! I’m so smart.”
I should start keeping a list of times when that happens. If I had a nickel for every time it happened, I’d have 2~3 nickels; which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened two or three times now.
Studies generally take time, so if it were months later they likely had it before you. The years later is a maybe, but also possible because it takes time to get grants to do studies as well. Exceptions tend to be more urgent stuff like the pandemic, but even then we had SARS outbreaks decades ago and they’ve been studying it for a while, even if it wasn’t specific SARS-COV-2.
I don’t want to take away from your joy and validation. You sound like a generally curious person who is frequently churning out ideas.
But that’s not how ideas (for doing experiments/doing research) work. Especially not in a scientific context. You have to have intimate knowledge of any matter to sift through a huge amount of various ideas and pluck out the ones that are feasible, that make sense and that are promising. That takes time and effort. Curiosity is obviously key, but actually pursuing any idea means a lot of work. It’s much more frustrating than one might think, especially because it usually doesn’t work the way you initially imagine it will. And most of these ideas need many years, or even decades to develop and study.
Yes, I’m very aware of everything you just said. Doesn’t mean it isn’t frustrating to find out that an idea you had was a good idea, but you couldn’t study it because you don’t know enough about the subject. I love science and engineering, but I didn’t find that out until after I graduated and I don’t have the money to “respec”.
What’s worse is when you have an idea, don’t have any idea how to pursue it because you’re not a professional [career] and don’t have experience making whatever it is; and then you see a successful paper or product months or years later about that exact same idea, made by someone who actually knows what they’re doing.
It’s frustrating yet validating. Frustrating because, “that could have been me”, validating because “I thought of the idea before it’d been developed too! I’m so smart.”
I should start keeping a list of times when that happens. If I had a nickel for every time it happened, I’d have 2~3 nickels; which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened two or three times now.
Studies generally take time, so if it were months later they likely had it before you. The years later is a maybe, but also possible because it takes time to get grants to do studies as well. Exceptions tend to be more urgent stuff like the pandemic, but even then we had SARS outbreaks decades ago and they’ve been studying it for a while, even if it wasn’t specific SARS-COV-2.
Sometimes I wish just being an “idea-person” would be a paid job.
I don’t want to take away from your joy and validation. You sound like a generally curious person who is frequently churning out ideas.
But that’s not how ideas (for doing experiments/doing research) work. Especially not in a scientific context. You have to have intimate knowledge of any matter to sift through a huge amount of various ideas and pluck out the ones that are feasible, that make sense and that are promising. That takes time and effort. Curiosity is obviously key, but actually pursuing any idea means a lot of work. It’s much more frustrating than one might think, especially because it usually doesn’t work the way you initially imagine it will. And most of these ideas need many years, or even decades to develop and study.
Yes, I’m very aware of everything you just said. Doesn’t mean it isn’t frustrating to find out that an idea you had was a good idea, but you couldn’t study it because you don’t know enough about the subject. I love science and engineering, but I didn’t find that out until after I graduated and I don’t have the money to “respec”.