Coursework-induced frustration, good preparation for research-induced frustration?

[Catria]

For what I know it might be discipline-dependent but I feel that, in the hard sciences, coursework-induced frustration is not a good preparation for research-induced preparation.

Then again, I tend to handle frustration rather differently depending on what induces it.

[rising_star]

Are you sure it's not though? I got frustrated at various times during my coursework but, often it was helpful for getting me to think about things from another perspective or consider alternatives. When it came time for my fieldwork, I ended up having to rework almost my entire project about two weeks into data collection so those skills did come in handy for me. 

[fuzzylogician]

I think it's all in your attitude. Sure, there were courses that I didn't enjoy, and ones that made me work hard on things that weren't relevant to my research. Them's the breaks. In any career you choose, lots of things you have to do aren't going to be exactly what you like or enjoy. Learning to deal with that is important. Learning to manage your time is important. I'd say the most important thing I learned from my coursework stage was how to work with others to solve problems and how to ask for help when I was stuck. That's something I needed to continue to learn and develop later on in my research stages, but that earlier experience is very relevant, even if the topics might not have been directly so. There is a choice to be made about how you want to view your grad school experience, and it'll change how you view lots of aspects of it. 

[Catria]

It's not perfect, I know, but it's not worthless either. But if you can do more on your own, it is easier to become independent...

Knowing when to give up is just as valuable as knowing when to persevere...