I was looking through my old emails and one thing that caught my eye is the September 2009 correspondence I had with one of my professors regarding his papers.
I had asked multiple professors to send me their very best papers to read through, but with this professor I had asked him to send me as many as possible. He sent a bunch, but perhaps I surprised him when I read all of those papers and even the working drafts (and notes). Boy, I remember having a bunch of questions!
This exchange is interesting to me because there's an old Matt Welsh quote (ex-Harvard professor) where he shares the following:
"It is, after all, my firmly held conviction that the goal of academia is to broadly disseminate good ideas for others to exploit."
That's what professors do, among other things. There's a wealth of information out there, and professors have done a bunch of legwork to lay out an organized platter of wonderful ideas. All you have to do is consume and digest.
