Today a student’s parent came to me with a question: their child has been attempting the graduate school entrance exam as a cross-discipline applicant (跨考) — now facing a fourth attempt. Should they keep going?
I asked: Do you know what the hardest problem they’re actually facing right now?
She said: I know — it’s that they had no undergraduate foundation in this field, so their studying has been directionless.
I said: Wrong. The hardest problem is that they cannot accept the fact that they simply aren’t suited for this direction — and they keep grinding away because of sunk cost. If they were truly gifted here, they’d have their master’s degree by now.
The parent was quiet for a moment, then said: We’ve been telling them the same thing, but the child insists they have to see this through — they have to get in.
I said: Determination is a wonderful thing. But it only means something when it’s pointed in the right direction. If they found the field they were actually built for and channeled that same drive, they could be working toward a doctorate by now.
Many of the legends in any given field are, in fact, obsessives — because that’s the only way to climb in a domain that is hard and relentless and unforgiving.
But what we’re really seeing is survivorship bias. For most people, that unshakeable refusal to change course will pull them off track — chasing something that will never give them a worthy return on what they’ve put in.