intelligent enough to make a meaningful contribution
If you’re doing it to make a “meaningful contribution”, not for fun, it can be hard to stay motivated without outside assurances that you’re doing “well”.
throw in the towel? grow up?
It’s hard not to identify as a child prodigy anymore. If you want to do something, there are things to do to increase your odds of success. For example, if you want to do really well on the Math GRE, do practice problems until you know all the concepts and get the score you want on practice tests. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of focus over a long time. If you want to make a meaningful contribution, look at Mark Andreessen’s advice: get pretty good at two separate areas/fields, then do something that uses both of them. The other option, being the best at one specific area, requires competing with people who enjoy studying so much it damages their health. Good luck.
This type of question is difficult to answer here because my answer necessarily relies mostly on relatively non-academic sources, largely personal experience, and it’s hard to discuss this topic for the same reasons it’s hard to discuss politics.
If you’re doing it to make a “meaningful contribution”, not for fun, it can be hard to stay motivated without outside assurances that you’re doing “well”.
It’s hard not to identify as a child prodigy anymore. If you want to do something, there are things to do to increase your odds of success. For example, if you want to do really well on the Math GRE, do practice problems until you know all the concepts and get the score you want on practice tests. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of focus over a long time. If you want to make a meaningful contribution, look at Mark Andreessen’s advice: get pretty good at two separate areas/fields, then do something that uses both of them. The other option, being the best at one specific area, requires competing with people who enjoy studying so much it damages their health. Good luck.
This type of question is difficult to answer here because my answer necessarily relies mostly on relatively non-academic sources, largely personal experience, and it’s hard to discuss this topic for the same reasons it’s hard to discuss politics.