I also realized that a lot of specialized areas in Engineering are just preoccupied with a few specific concepts —- most are not incredible wizards. I was weak

I also realized that a lot of specialized areas in Engineering are just preoccupied with a few specific concepts —- most are not incredible wizards. I was weak in matrix/linear algebra. All the graduate students seemed obsessed with matrix decomposition, eigenvalues, and Hermetian forms. After taking an optimization course (heavily matrix based) I realized they were just using the same small bag of tricks for everything.