Two score and 4 years ago as an undergraduate EE at Drexel Inst of Tech (now Drexel U.)in my first ee course we had to take two exams and a final. Each exam consisted of 3 questions. If you had attended class and done the homework, the first question was easy or a least straight forward. The second was a bear. And the third was at best a bitch. Few garnered any points on it. In the class when the papers were handed back, one of the other students asked our instructor (later to become a dearly loved prof). "Mr Kaplan, why haven't we been taught to solve the third question?" His response, which has guided me for a long time now, was "you have been provided the tools to solve the problem, I just showed you that it could be done with your knowledge. You are not here to learn how to solve the known problems, you are here to learn how to solve the unknown." Again, thank you Mr. Kaplan!
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Two score and 4 years ago as an undergraduate EE at Drexel Inst of Tech (now Drexel U.)in my first ee course we had to take two exams and a final. Each exam consisted of 3 questions. If you had attended class and done the homework, the first question was easy or a least straight forward. The second was a bear. And the third was at best a bitch. Few garnered any points on it. In the class when the papers were handed back, one of the other students asked our instructor (later to become a dearly loved prof). "Mr Kaplan, why haven't we been taught to solve the third question?" His response, which has guided me for a long time now, was "you have been provided the tools to solve the problem, I just showed you that it could be done with your knowledge. You are not here to learn how to solve the known problems, you are here to learn how to solve the unknown." Again, thank you Mr. Kaplan!