Things I Don't Know

So begins the torturous process of research, torturous not because it's boring or lengthy but rather because I find myself smacked in the face at every turn with terminology or concepts I simply do not know. Now this in itself is not entirely frustrating just a bit depressing at times because it makes me feel, rather, KNOW that I'm under prepared for this. That I am perhaps significantly less suited to this than so many others. No, it's frustrating because of how hard it is to actually learn the things I don't know. The material is lacking, and hopefully only because I don't know how to properly look for it, but the most frustrating thing is when it appears there's a large pool of information other computer scientists learned at birth by osmosis as their squishy bodies, specially attuned to being computer scientists, sucked the knowledge straight out of the mother grub they clung to. While I, a hulking inefficient alien stumbled into this all with wide-eyed primitive fascination and everyone has secretly been laughing at me all along. When this happens it feels utterly impossible to find out anything about the process of HOW did anyone come to learn this or that, rather the terms are sprinkled around in papers as if they should be common knowledge and that definitely doesn't help me feel more suited to this either....

I initially thought maybe it'd be a good thing for me to try to document what I don't know, and write out how I did come to know it eventually. But the task seems so daunting, there's simply far more I don't know than what I know. Maybe this is the stage at which everyone decides its easier to simply pretend they knew these things all along, but if I never get around to it, let this stand as a message to my fellow primitives:

YOU ARE NOT ALONE.