even with medication, my working memory is pretty bad
To say the obvious: make notes about what you learn. (I am not recommending any specific note-taking method here, only the general advice that a mediocre system you actually start using today is better than a hypothetically perfect system you only dream about.) It really sucks to spend a lot of time and work learning something, then not using it for a few years, then finding out you actually forgot everything.
This usually doesn’t happen at high school, because the elementary and high school education is designed as a spiral (you learn something, then four years later you learn the more advanced version of the thing). But at university: you may learn a thing once, and maybe never again.
I was the best in my class with 40 students
How much this means, you will only find out later, because it depends a lot on your specific school and classmates. I mean, it definitely means that you are good… but is it 1:100 good or 1:1000000 good? At high school both are impressive, but in later life you are going to compete against people who often also were the best in their classes.
I mean, it definitely means that you are good… but is it 1:100 good or 1:1000000 good? At high school both are impressive, but in later life you are going to compete against people who often also were the best in their classes.
Update after a year:
I am currently studying CS and I feel like I got kind of spoiled by reading “How to be a straight A student” which was mostly aimed at us-college students, and it was kind of hard to sort out which kinds of advice would apply in Germany and made the whole thing seem easier than it actually is. I am doing ok, but my grades aren’t great (my best guess is that in pure grit+IQ I’m somewhere in the upper 40%). In the end, I decided that the value of this information wasn’t so great after all, and now I am focusing more on how to actually gain career capital and getting better at prioritizing on a day-to-day basis.
To say the obvious: make notes about what you learn. (I am not recommending any specific note-taking method here, only the general advice that a mediocre system you actually start using today is better than a hypothetically perfect system you only dream about.) It really sucks to spend a lot of time and work learning something, then not using it for a few years, then finding out you actually forgot everything.
This usually doesn’t happen at high school, because the elementary and high school education is designed as a spiral (you learn something, then four years later you learn the more advanced version of the thing). But at university: you may learn a thing once, and maybe never again.
How much this means, you will only find out later, because it depends a lot on your specific school and classmates. I mean, it definitely means that you are good… but is it 1:100 good or 1:1000000 good? At high school both are impressive, but in later life you are going to compete against people who often also were the best in their classes.
Update after a year: I am currently studying CS and I feel like I got kind of spoiled by reading “How to be a straight A student” which was mostly aimed at us-college students, and it was kind of hard to sort out which kinds of advice would apply in Germany and made the whole thing seem easier than it actually is. I am doing ok, but my grades aren’t great (my best guess is that in pure grit+IQ I’m somewhere in the upper 40%). In the end, I decided that the value of this information wasn’t so great after all, and now I am focusing more on how to actually gain career capital and getting better at prioritizing on a day-to-day basis.