Could you elaborate on what you mean by status and how you reached the belief that it is relevant to your studying?
While being a professor has a certain amount of status in the eyes of the outside world, I’m not sure one should attribute this status to “being good at math”; indeed, it would probably be easiest to transform math into academic prestige through some other field, like bioinformatics. An anecdote about status and the outside world: there is a U of Chicago professor who is bitter that his parents think it a state school. By being good at math, you’ll gain status in the eyes of mathematicians. I think most people have the opposite problem, that being in a graduate program, surrounded by people who care about the subject causes them to think the world cares about it.
In the past, my mind made me obsessed with number theory. Since then, I have decided that studying number theory is something that I actually want to do.
More recently, the set of people who were happy when I was good at math (esp. my parents) have had less influence in my life, and people who were less happy about it (i.e. math classmates who weren’t going to grad school and felt like I was being a smart ass) have had more influence.
So as opposed to previously, when my underlying drives said “do math all the time” and I gained short term status from it, I know have a desire to do math all the time and my underlying drives aren’t helping me out like they used to.
An actual suggestion, before I continue interrogating you for my own curiosity: Have you tried mathoverflow as a way of acquiring a community that promotes the status you want?
people who were less happy about it (i.e. math classmates who weren’t going to grad school and felt like I was being a smart ass) have had more influence.
How do they have more influence in grad school than they had in undergrad? Did they only start being negative when your paths diverged? Or did you not need to study in undergrad and so you didn’t notice that you were losing this ability? But if that’s the case, how do you know it’s status and not just being out of practice studying?
You explained what you mean by status, but you didn’t really answer how you know. I’m skeptical of your introspection.
I spent time with students who didn’t study math while I was an undergrad, so I wasn’t in direct academic competition with them. Also many of them were good students, so grades could be social status markers, whereas the graduate school I’m in is not hugely prestigious, and I am the youngest student in the program. Also I the friends that I have gotten to know better recently have told me these feelings explicitly which they had not before.
I also had somewhat poor study skills, but my introspection springs from the fact that I learned about the singularity (read Kurzweil for the first time), failed my first math class, and experienced depression for the first time within a few months of each other. In the past, I sometimes felt that I could achieve figurative immortality and value by being a great mathematician because I could always succeed, now figurative immortality seems bitter and abstract math seems like fruit that hangs high relative to future changes in mental architecture (I think uploads or AI will easily advance mathematics beyond what I can accomplish.)
I’m being stingier with the details than I could be because the whole thing is somewhat personal.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by status and how you reached the belief that it is relevant to your studying?
While being a professor has a certain amount of status in the eyes of the outside world, I’m not sure one should attribute this status to “being good at math”; indeed, it would probably be easiest to transform math into academic prestige through some other field, like bioinformatics. An anecdote about status and the outside world: there is a U of Chicago professor who is bitter that his parents think it a state school.
By being good at math, you’ll gain status in the eyes of mathematicians. I think most people have the opposite problem, that being in a graduate program, surrounded by people who care about the subject causes them to think the world cares about it.
In the past, my mind made me obsessed with number theory. Since then, I have decided that studying number theory is something that I actually want to do.
More recently, the set of people who were happy when I was good at math (esp. my parents) have had less influence in my life, and people who were less happy about it (i.e. math classmates who weren’t going to grad school and felt like I was being a smart ass) have had more influence.
So as opposed to previously, when my underlying drives said “do math all the time” and I gained short term status from it, I know have a desire to do math all the time and my underlying drives aren’t helping me out like they used to.
So what I want to do is harness the other kind of status.
An actual suggestion, before I continue interrogating you for my own curiosity:
Have you tried mathoverflow as a way of acquiring a community that promotes the status you want?
How do they have more influence in grad school than they had in undergrad? Did they only start being negative when your paths diverged? Or did you not need to study in undergrad and so you didn’t notice that you were losing this ability? But if that’s the case, how do you know it’s status and not just being out of practice studying?
You explained what you mean by status, but you didn’t really answer how you know. I’m skeptical of your introspection.
I spent time with students who didn’t study math while I was an undergrad, so I wasn’t in direct academic competition with them. Also many of them were good students, so grades could be social status markers, whereas the graduate school I’m in is not hugely prestigious, and I am the youngest student in the program. Also I the friends that I have gotten to know better recently have told me these feelings explicitly which they had not before.
I also had somewhat poor study skills, but my introspection springs from the fact that I learned about the singularity (read Kurzweil for the first time), failed my first math class, and experienced depression for the first time within a few months of each other. In the past, I sometimes felt that I could achieve figurative immortality and value by being a great mathematician because I could always succeed, now figurative immortality seems bitter and abstract math seems like fruit that hangs high relative to future changes in mental architecture (I think uploads or AI will easily advance mathematics beyond what I can accomplish.)
I’m being stingier with the details than I could be because the whole thing is somewhat personal.