There were several occasions in university where I had the opportunity to tutor students from other majors, sometimes in a professional capacity provided by the school, and other times as a friend. During this time, I met a wide range of students from different backgrounds and different capabilities.
It took me a while to recognize, but looking back, I think this experience taught me a few very valuable lessons about problem solving.
Every last student I tutored found the material frustrating. They were expected to display familiarity of the subject matter, but naturally as students, the material was initially unfamiliar. And of course it was. Because that's inherent to the learning process!!
Frustration. noun. the prevention of the progress, success, or fulfillment of something
Friction. noun. the resistive force that inhibits relative motion between two bodies in contact
Friction is a resistive force that slows or impedes motion. But that doesn't make friction a bad force. Clearly, friction is necessary for simple machines to function. Life would be very very different if every surface you interacted with was frictionless.
Frustration on the other hand, is a resistive force that has a negative connotation. That is, feeling like you're being held back from fulfillment, especially if you feel that it's either yourself (you're not smart enough) or someone else (a professor that isn't good at teaching) that's holding you back, is, well, frustrating.
This is particularly true when there are social pressures for you to demonstrate competence (students are expected to learn, to do homework, to pass exams, and to not look clueless to their peers).
Finding the unfamiliar frustrating is a universal experience of being Human
My claim is that frustration is as necessary to the learning process as friction is for simple machines to function. That is, when applied to learning, the two words are synonyms. The learning process is, generally speaking, transforming the unfamiliar into the familiar. There's always resistance to this transformation; that comes from the unfamiliar being... unfamiliar.
Said differently, the learning process requires conquering frustration. This is partly what makes learning so rewarding; you get to experience that moment where the friction is overcome, where being held back yields to making progress, where the unfamiliar becomes familiar, and where frustration gives way to mastery.
In my experience as a tutor, looking at myself as a problem-solver, and in observing colleagues at work, I observe many different reactions to frustration.
I claim that the most successful students were the ones who accepted frustration, and learned to meet it with grit and determination.
My favorite students to tutor were the ones who met uncertainty with excitement. They still felt the self-doubt, and the challenge stemming from the unfamiliar. Learning the material didn't come easy to these students, but rather, they were able to manage the discouragement long enough to navigate to the solution.
Grit. noun. courage and resolve
Determination. noun. firmness of purpose; resoluteness
This is challenging. It's a natural reaction to meet constant frustration with self-doubt, or even anger. But because frustration is an essential aspect of learning, those who weathered out their frustration were the ones who learned the most.
This is perhaps the most valuable lesson I took away from my university experience; frustration is a normal and necessary aspect of learning. The feelings of self-doubt, discouragement, and frustration are normal, and I'm not lesser for feeling them.
After enough time solving problems (which hasn't stopped after university), I've learned that one of my primary skills is in how I manage frustration during the problem-solving process. Understanding that frustration is expected, normal, and necessary has allowed me to accept it as part of the process. This has made me far more confident in my ability to tackle the new and unfamiliar.
I do, however, feel that anger, while a natural response, is not appropriate, and holds back the problem-solver from the solution. Anger at yourself is short sighted and unproductive, and anger at others doesn't recognize the learner's own responsibility in learning.
This realization leads me to meet challenges surrounded with uncertainty with confidence. Unfortunately, this confidence only seems to appear when I'm faced with technical challenges. The same principles don't seem to apply to social challenges.
During my time as a tutor, I also came across students with surprising expectations. There were no small number of students who expected that every exam problem first had to be a homework problem, and for every homework problem to first have been an in-class example, albeit with possibly different numbers.
I felt this was a bizarre expectation; that they could only be expected to succeed on a problem if they had seen it before. To this day, I still look back on those experiences with shock. Memorizing a catalog of homework problems isn't learning. And it's incorrect to put an expectation on others to help you navigate an uncertain challenge (even if it is helpful to have this help).
Another metaphor often used to discuss the learning process, is that of digging; when faced with a question you don't know the answer to, sometimes you can google it and find a ready-made answer. There are a large number of questions out there where this is possible. But there are also questions that you don't know how to search for the answer in a search engine.
It's these questions where you need to dig in order to find answers. You have to sift through large amounts of potentially unrelated material, building up a mental model piece-by-piece.
You also have to re-evaluate your mental model with each nugget of new information. I've recently faced some problems where I had an incorrect understanding that led me to an incorrect conclusion. To help combat this, I've found it useful to take detailed notes listing:
I find it very helpful to separate facts from beliefs, because it allows me to focus on beliefs until I either find that they are facts, or that I don't have the right understanding. The astute reader can recognize this as the Scientific Method.
Humans sometimes have difficulty separating belief from fact. I've found that keeping notes helps me make this separation, which in turn helps me approach problem-solving with a more open mind.
Often, the process of asking myself "Is this something I believe, or something I know?" and pulling on the resulting threads leads me to the solution.
When faced with uncertainty, unfamiliar topics, and when you're not sure where to start, this is when "digging in" proves to be valuable. It's okay to not know the answer, but dammit I'm going to find it.
I believe that frustration is inherent to the problem solving process, and that the ability to manage the negative emotions that come along with frustration is an essential skill for any problem-solver. This ability is just as important to technical problem solving as is mastery of the technical topics at hand.