How long does it take "not knowing" about groundwater modeling

A groundwater flow model is in fact a numerical construction that tries to represent the groundwater flow regime of a certain place with the relevant physical process conceptualized as boundary conditions. So we as humans, capable of developing machine learning algorithms and smartphones, tend to think that building and running a groundwater model is a natural process that will require us to follow certain steps and it would be completed in a certain time. 

Drawing parallel with cooking, the approach of building a groundwater model as a recipe can apply to certain cases as the omelette-model and even the carbonara-model, but if you want to cook the lomo-saltado-model all recipes might fall short and the reality is you might have never tried a lomo saltado and you have idea how to make one.

I was particularly motivated to write about this topic inspired by a certain case that happened some days ago. While trying to couple a transport model into a flow model on Modflow 6 with Flopy, I have found and error with setting up and auxiliary on a boundary condition; I have read the new approach of auxiliaries and boundnames on the Modflow 6 documentation but I wasn't aware how the work and how to setup them in Flopy.

After some initial trial and error on the Flopy code I realized that this topic will last long and I decided to use the black magic or all the tricks and procedures known and include the comparison with other cases, the hacking of the Flopy code to catch the exact error, the documentation review, and even some ChatGPT search although those searches were really useless. It took me 2 days to solve just how to set an auxiliary on the boundary condition and I wonder how much time will it take for a beginner groundwater modeler to solve this. It might take months for a beginner modeler to solve an error like this, and on the way they might try to change the code, try to change the scope or even drop the model.

"Now knowing" on groundwater modeling is something that will take time and a lot of frustration, and "knowing" will also take time with a bit less of frustration. Experience and documentation review are the keys to solve complex models and complex errors, persistence is required, and beginner groundwater modelers have to realize that the path is long and every step, every error, every documentation review will count to solve the next error.

I am convinced that groundwater modeling is a great tool for groundwater management and there is a need to implement policies based on groundwater models that ensure access to the groundwater resources for coming generations, but there is a need to have a new generation of groundwater modelers with all the skills required to model diverse topics with some approaches that we will discuss later on.