What is an intellectual professional?

　Like the great ancestors of the past, we can make new inventions and discoveries that go beyond existing common sense, play an active role on the world stage with a wide range of education, deep expertise, and leadership, and become a human society with knowledge. People who contribute are what I call "knowledge professionals."In order to become this "professional of knowledge", it is indispensable to acquire three basic skills, especially in the first to fourth year of university undergraduate level.

One is "the ability to generate new ideas and ideas on your own."At the University of Tokyo, we aim to cultivate the leaders of the world's most advanced knowledge, but it is also a world without a model by our predecessors.If you are content with just learning from your teacher, you will never be able to break through the limits of your existing knowledge.

The second is "patience to keep thinking."No one knows the way to reach the correct answer in the pursuit of cutting-edge knowledge.I don't even know if there is a correct answer in the first place.What is required is not just to "think", but to keep thinking for days, weeks, and sometimes months without getting tired.The historical discovery of a genius, allegedly created by a momentary inspiration, is, in most cases, a product of "thinking patience."

The third is "the ability to return to the principle and think for yourself."One thing to keep in mind when staying at a university and aiming to become a researcher is that the more sophisticated the academic discipline, the more specialized and subdivided it tends to be.Among them, lucky researchers who have no experience of getting lost in a dead end are rather rare.It is this power that saves it.If you go back to the principle, you can see where you are standing now.Then, by constantly asking "for what", you can determine the direction you should go.