I think have a bug of this form, and it’s been an issue for me for a long time.
When it’s school break or a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, I find that it’s peaceful for me to study mathematics because I feel like I’m not being forced to study certain things. But as soon as school starts, and I take a math class where the material starts to become unfamiliar to me , and there’s no motivation being provided for the material as to why we are doing what we we’re doing, it feels forced and so I become stymied by listening to music and browsing articles on psychology/cognitive science, reddit ,or lesswrong to figure out this burnout , and then bouncing back to thinking whether I should suppress my curiosity to do well in the class , or should I let my curiosity run free but in return not doing so great in the class.
Because if I don’t suppress my curiosity and hence flow with mathematics, then I feel like I’ll run the risk of diverging away from the course material, which in turn I’ll do badly on exams because I didn’t focus on the required topics enough.
I’ve taken some proof based courses like real analysis, so it’s not like I don’t know how to prove some things in a typical traditional math undergrad course . It’s just that I feel guilty not focusing on my school , so I retreat to listening to music or reading psychology or browsing lesswrong articles to escape from these negative feelings on whether I should focus exclusively on the math in the class or playing with math I find interesting but at the risk of performing poorly in my class. I know these two activities don’t have to be mutually exclusive: you can play with math you find interesting that’s been assigned by the professor. However, the math assigned by the professor might not be interesting sometimes at first, so I burnout from being bombarded by “should” statements.
Any input/advice/guidance from anyone here would be greatly appreciated. I’ve been having trouble fixing this bug alone.
My suggestion is that if it feels effortful to do well enough in the class to get the grade you want, then drop it. School is terrible. If you want to optimize for credentials then you can do it by taking the easiest classes that allow you to graduate in the major you want, and you can optimize for credentials completely separately from your actual learning.
I think have a bug of this form, and it’s been an issue for me for a long time.
When it’s school break or a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, I find that it’s peaceful for me to study mathematics because I feel like I’m not being forced to study certain things. But as soon as school starts, and I take a math class where the material starts to become unfamiliar to me , and there’s no motivation being provided for the material as to why we are doing what we we’re doing, it feels forced and so I become stymied by listening to music and browsing articles on psychology/cognitive science, reddit ,or lesswrong to figure out this burnout , and then bouncing back to thinking whether I should suppress my curiosity to do well in the class , or should I let my curiosity run free but in return not doing so great in the class.
Because if I don’t suppress my curiosity and hence flow with mathematics, then I feel like I’ll run the risk of diverging away from the course material, which in turn I’ll do badly on exams because I didn’t focus on the required topics enough.
I’ve taken some proof based courses like real analysis, so it’s not like I don’t know how to prove some things in a typical traditional math undergrad course . It’s just that I feel guilty not focusing on my school , so I retreat to listening to music or reading psychology or browsing lesswrong articles to escape from these negative feelings on whether I should focus exclusively on the math in the class or playing with math I find interesting but at the risk of performing poorly in my class. I know these two activities don’t have to be mutually exclusive: you can play with math you find interesting that’s been assigned by the professor. However, the math assigned by the professor might not be interesting sometimes at first, so I burnout from being bombarded by “should” statements.
Any input/advice/guidance from anyone here would be greatly appreciated. I’ve been having trouble fixing this bug alone.
My suggestion is that if it feels effortful to do well enough in the class to get the grade you want, then drop it. School is terrible. If you want to optimize for credentials then you can do it by taking the easiest classes that allow you to graduate in the major you want, and you can optimize for credentials completely separately from your actual learning.