There's an incredibly common roadblock in math education when you make the jump from mechanical maths to creative maths. On one side, math makes sense as a set of powerful rules which help to guide you to understand and analyze the world. On the other side, math is more like a penpal friend while you're living in a foreign country. It offers advice, but largely you're on your own in a confusing land.
Academic papers are written from the far side of that roadblock. They're often best considered anecdotal pointers to how to survive abroad rather than comprehensive guides like textbooks (or review papers) offer. Reading them is thus both an exercise in deciphering something distant from your comfort zone and learning to apply its vague knowledge to your own situation.
In order to understand academic papers then, you've kind of got to become a traveler yourself. At that point you appreciate the vague note passing because even though it's difficult, there's a real opportunity there to see something few ever have before.
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So practically, academic papers are never easy to decipher unless you're basically part of the same communities as the authors (or they are really dedicated and skillful communicators who have an uncommonly deep understanding of the topics they're writing about). If you're doing work that cannot be solved by what exists and is common knowledge today, however, they're your best bet at finding a guide and no matter how difficult they are you want to read them through.
I shudder to think how many hours I spent poring over textbooks and lecture notes just so I could have the "AHA" moment that comes along with dealing with abstract entities.
Academic papers are written from the far side of that roadblock. They're often best considered anecdotal pointers to how to survive abroad rather than comprehensive guides like textbooks (or review papers) offer. Reading them is thus both an exercise in deciphering something distant from your comfort zone and learning to apply its vague knowledge to your own situation.
In order to understand academic papers then, you've kind of got to become a traveler yourself. At that point you appreciate the vague note passing because even though it's difficult, there's a real opportunity there to see something few ever have before.
---
So practically, academic papers are never easy to decipher unless you're basically part of the same communities as the authors (or they are really dedicated and skillful communicators who have an uncommonly deep understanding of the topics they're writing about). If you're doing work that cannot be solved by what exists and is common knowledge today, however, they're your best bet at finding a guide and no matter how difficult they are you want to read them through.