I think this is fairly common first-year grad student emotional response. And quite frankly, it is the job of your mentor and department to ensure you receive s

I think this is fairly common first-year grad student emotional response. And quite frankly, it is the job of your mentor and department to ensure you receive sufficient training for an academic or research career. Modern AI is evolving rapidly but there is a foundation upon which everyone draws upon. The Sutton and Barto book is one such foundational text. Find a collaborator in the Math department to work with. And participate daily in stack overflow forums for math and stats, such as Cross Validated. I can also recommend CASI by Efron and Hastie. Deep historical understanding of where we are today in probabilistic inference. https://web.stanford.edu/%7Ehastie/CASI/ https://web.stanford.edu/%7Ehastie/CASI/