Self-Improvement: Skills and Knowledge/技术和知识

Someone told me recently that highlighting my skills is better than pigeon-holding my role to that of aerospace. In other words, my skills can be transferable across multiple disciplines whereas my knowledge typically cannot. Skills is the how while knowledge is the what.

While doing research though, much of what happens initially is not developing skills but rather building a foundation of knowledge. The knowledge give you the bricks that can form a house and the skills give you the tools to put the bricks together. Without knowledge, just having skill is not enough while with skill and no knowledge, you have to learn a lot.

My mother is a good example. When she switched from forestry to oncology (cancer research), she had to quickly build her knowledge of the human body. Previously, she only knew about plant cells so she had to learn about human cells from the bottom up. However, since she had the skills of a molecular biologist, she could still do research while learning about how the human cells work.

If you only have skills and knowledge, you can be a good scientist or engineer but not an excellent one. The last element you need is creativity. This will be discussed in another short essay later.

今早当我在洗澡时，突然想起来一月前修改简历的事情。一个在石油行业的家伙打了电话给我提议我的简历需要修改因为我在上面提到太多次“太空”这个词，说我因该强调我的可以多种行业运转的技术。

但是，当在做研究时，不少一开始发生的不是发展技术而是建立知识基础。知识会给你可以建好房子的砖块，技术可以给你工具拼合砖块。两项不能缺少一项。

我母亲是个好例子。当她从林学转到肿瘤学时，她之前只懂植物细胞，没研究过人体细胞。但是因为她有分子生物学的技术，当她在学人体细胞是同时可以做研究。

要是你只有技术和知识，你可以是个不错的科学家或工程师但不可能是个优秀的。最后需要的成分是创造力。这在以后的短篇散文再提吧。