What do I do if I feel there are many things which need to be learnt to do my research?

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I am a second year PhD student in probability from the UK. I enjoy what I do, but here is a problem:

as I dig deep into my study, I realize I have to read a lot of stuff I do not fully understand and they often arise in fields of study which are not probability, but related areas: e.g. PDE theory, functional analysis.

I have a basic understandings about some of these things, sometimes I might even feel I have enough to get by, but I am unsatisfied. This is perhaps due to the fact I never studied some of these topics as an undergraduate, but to be fair, no one told me an understanding of PDE theory is very useful to probability (I even think this only depends on what you do)

I do want to know more and previously I tried to attend multiple courses in a term to make up for some of this - this was not effective. Going to 1 or 2 courses a term is fine, but doing any more is a big drain of time if I want to fully understand the material lecture.

So have others experienced this? What is the best way of getting around this?