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.
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.