I’m a Master’s student at a university of no repute. I’m not stupid. In fact I would say I’m fairly intelligent. I graduated near the top of my class. I’ve always been performed well in academia and have been decent at math. But I feel like I’ve always had to work harder to get it than others. I’m not a prodigy.

When it comes to ML, specifically ML Engineering (which is where I want to be), it feels like there’s a mountain of things you have to know: Software Engineering principles, a variety of languages, algorithms and their complexities, software frameworks, statistics, mathematics, domain specific requirements. And I feel like the field is always changing and I’m never going to be “informed” as it were.

I feel like I’ve spent most of my Master’s degree just checking off the boxes to get my degree (while also paying for it) and I haven’t had enough time to delve into ML and now that I’m 8 months out from being done I don’t have the knowledge I need to actually move into this field.

But when I read this sub I think that I’m never going to be ready to move into the field. I’m always going to be fighting to understand the math well enough but then I’m not going to have enough time to understand the frameworks or the software engineering. It feels like I’m the jack of all trades but the master of none.

How do I navigate this field to feel like I’m learning effectively? Is it even worth it to pursue this field if I’m not a math prodigy? I want feel competant and that I’m not just another surface level ML practitioner.