While I agree that society tends to dissuade women from math, it doesn’t really work in my specific subset. I grew up with more female math-related role models than male. (Mom was chemistry major, dad majored in education partially because he sucked at math.) And the B is a massive outlier- it takes a lot of work for me to keep a C, usually. But thank you for the input.
riparianx
Karma: 144
Hi, I’m Alexandra. I’m turning 18 tomorrow, and I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that I have GOT to be more rigorous in my self-improvement if I’m going to manage to reach my ambitions.
I’m not quite a new member- I’ve lurked a lot, and even made a post a while back that got a decent number of comments and karma.
I discovered Less Wrong through HPMOR. It was the first time I’d read a story with genuinely intelligent characters, and the things in it resonated a lot with me. This was a couple of years ago. I’ve spent a lot of time here and on the various other sites the rationalist community likes.
I’m mostly posting this now because I’d like to get more involved. I recently read an article that said the best way to increase competency at a subject is to join a community revolving around the subject. I live in OKC, where I’ve never even HEARD of another student of rationality. The closest I’ve gotten is introducing my boyfriend to HPMOR.
I’m a biology student at a community college near my living space. I’m very good at biology, english, philosophy, etc. I’m really, REALLY bad at chemistry/physics and math. I’ve done some basic research into what makes a person suck at mathematical things, but it’s been frustratingly low on insights. Most of the time, it’s resulted in “you need to practice! you need to learn mathematical thinking!” which is objectively true, but practically, a little more detail in what to do about it would be nice. Practice hasn’t really seemed to help too much beyond working problems. Give me an equation and variables and I can do the math. But I can’t EXPLAIN anything, or apply it to non-obvious problems involving it. This is seriously getting in the way of both my biology studies and my study of rationality. I took general chemistry 1 twice to get a low B. I’m in the first two weeks of general chemistry 2 and it takes ages to get what seems like basic concepts. When I discovered I magically had a B in College Algebra, I suspected the professor curved the grade without telling us. I withdrew from precalc after three weeks because I realized I couldn’t cope.
I’m hoping to get into contact with some of the more mathematically inclined people here who are willing to help. I considered emailing a few of the higher-profile contributors to the community, but frankly, they’re intimidating and the idea is very scary to my inner caveman worrying about being kicked out of the tribe.
I have some pretty lofty goals for my future research- I want to go into genetically modified organisms, and try to improve nutrition and caloric intake in parts of the world where that sort of thing is difficult to get. Reducing scarcity in our society seems like a good start to a general boost in the “goodness” of the world. But there is absolutely no way I can succeed at this if I can’t get a good handle on math and chemistry. My skill at the lower levels of biology is only going to carry me so far.
I’ve probably rambled enough, so thanks if you took the time to read. If, for some strange reason, you feel a pull towards helping a struggling student get a grasp on abstract thinking, I urge you to give into the temptation because oh god I need the help.
I like this idea. Sort of a “this journal article showed that this technique was statistically useful, this one said another technique was not” kind of thing?
Wow. You’ve been thorough. Note to self: modafinil is probably something I want to avoid if it can exacerbate anxiety that badly.
I got the anxiety book, and I’m starting to go through it. I absolutely recommend it- a few pages in and I was thinking “This guy just completely destroyed a lot of my justifications for having low self-esteem.”
I sometimes think that LWers actually underestimate the help that individuals suggesting ideas can be. More than once, a friend has said something that made me think, “holy crap, I’ve approached this not just from the wrong angle, but the wrong freaking plane.” I also have noticed that suggestions without disclaimers tend to get downvoted here, so I suspect the cached reaction is a good cached reaction.
Also, thanks for the giggle.
Huh. That actually does sound like what I do. Everything I’ve come across has suggested that’s what you’re supposed to do, though. And it is very relaxing.
I have no idea if any good teachers are around, but if they were, I couldn’t afford lessons. Is there a reason why dissociating is bad? Because it’s really enjoyable and makes me feel energetic and relaxed- even more than a full night of sleep does.
Coming from a reductionist “mind is brain” viewpoint, therapy actually does help. This is pretty well documented in the fact that 73% of patients who go through it say it helped in the long run. (statistic from my psych 101 textbook) Talking to a therapist may not increase your serotonin levels, but it does help teach you new mental “patterns” and ways to cope with the results. Saying the brain doesn’t follow patterns is, well, wrong. The more you have a thought, the more the thought comes to you. If a chemical imbalance puts you in a mood that leaves you susceptible to a kind of thought, then you’ll have that thought and start a negative pattern. So even then, if the chemical imbalance is fixed, you can still be stuck with the results. Therapy helps you build more positive patterns and maybe even let the old ones fade.
America actually has this weird cultural thing where living with your parents past 20 is seen as a badge of shame. You might have heard the “nerd in his parent’s basement” stereotype a few times. The conservative families I know do have the “family values” thing, but they also have a huge “independence” thing. Most of them don’t want their kids still in the home after they hit adulthood. They do tend to want to be near family, though. Obviously this is anecdotal evidence and should be taken with a grain of salt.
This is exactly what I was doing- constantly looking for the system that would let me be successful while ignoring the root problems. I only accepted the anxiety when it got too bad to ignore. Can I ask what you’ve been doing that’s been so effective?
If anyone is interested in actually being part of a support group of sorts, let me know- if enough people are interested, I’ll see if I can find a good way to do it.
Well, I’m not the only person who struggles with anxiety, much less mental illness in general, so while your advice may not apply to me it probably applies to someone else. Focusing all of the discussion of mental illness on the one mentally ill person who started the discussion is… well, not exactly what I started the discussion FOR. So, any advice you have is totally welcome and appreciated.
I meditate regularly- not quite daily, because when I get into a meditative state, I tend to not want to come out. When I do meditate, I’m still and quiet for at LEAST an hour. If I try to meditate for, say, 30 minutes, I end up setting another timer because I didn’t get deep enough into quiet state. Meditation doesn’t bring up suppressed emotions for me, though.
I do journal, but not gratitude journaling. I haven’t tried that one because it seems more suited to a sad, apathetic person than a person who cares too much about everything and tends to minimize the good and maximize the bad. I like tracking the anxiety, though, and writing down thoughts lets me temporarily remove them from my mental state.
I empathized maybe a little too much with this post. Thank you for writing it.
Sometimes I’ll read something written by a person from a different area of the world and be utterly baffled- these people are WALKING to the store? I mean, there’s a Braum’s about half a mile away, but if you’re actually buying things that can be pretty impractical. I live pretty close to the metro in my state, but even still, everything’s pretty far away.
Something I’ve noticed about Europeans in particular- what to us is the next big town over, is the next country over to many of them. “Hey, there’s a meetup in Austin! That’s only about 300 miles away!” is like “Well, there’s a meeting in France, but no way I’m driving 300 miles just for that.” America is BIG. If you take a major highway, there can be a hundred miles between one town and the next.
The whole, “well, why don’t you just move somewhere better?” is particularly crazy when you think about this. Movers cost hundreds of dollars a day. Moving any great distance takes days. Getting a new residence is RIDICULOUSLY expensive in the “nice” places. Rent for a 1000sqft apartment in New York is more than I’ve made in the last six months. Then there’s downpayments, utilities, setting up new accounts for phones and internet, etc. You’ll probably need a new license. College costs TRIPLE if you move out of state, because there’s this awful thing they do where if you haven’t been a state resident for X period of time, they get to charge you triple tuition. Heaven forbid you have to move with another person- a kid, say. I’d have to save for YEARS to be able to afford the first three months of a new residence.
Interesting, I haven’t heard of most of these. When I get the chance I’ll have to do some research.
Anxiety CAN be a good response. The fear-response that anxiety basically is can be a good “oh crap, I’m in a bad situation here.” Getting nervous when asking someone out is uncomfortable and kinda useless. Getting nervous walking down a street at night when someone seems to be following you is normal, and helps you respond properly. The pervasiveness is a major part. If the anxiety is infringing on your life in a lot of useless ways, you probably have an anxiety problem. If a minor problem causes extreme fear, like an unbearable fear of close spaces, you might have a problem- almost everyone has to get in an elevator at some point, and having a panic attack because of it would be inconvenient and unpleasant.
Perhaps tackling specific problems at a time would be more effective. But considering the sheer number of kinds of problems here, I’m not sure. If I wanted to write a sequence on “general mental illness” (sorry, I’m going to continue using that phrase because it’s not confusing and it’s a good, simple term that doesn’t require a lot of terms and you all know what I mean), and wrote, say, one article per mental illness… Well, I could say goodbye to ever getting anything else done. The research alone would take a lifetime, just on what we know now. Writing something worth having on LessWrong is a pretty big endeavor.
Once again, the problem is the sheer complexity of the problem. If we only tackled the really common ones (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, etc.) we might be able to do some good work, though.
Your english is better than the english of a lot of native speakers.
Well… yeah, online discussion is inefficient. But when you’re cut off from the efficient options, you probably shouldn’t throw up your hands and give up. I’m not sure if that’s what you meant, though.
I think you may be disregarding the viewpoints of others, here. You can’t do any efficient self-improvement if you refuse to call your problems what they are. It might feel nice to say “You know what? I’m not mentally ill. I just need to improve myself.” I WANT to improve myself. Most people here do. I’ve hit a roadblock here, and I want to talk to other people that have, or have in the past. I’d like to hear the viewpoints of others. What worked, what didn’t, etc. Group therapy/discussions with people with the same problem or similar have been extremely helpful to a lot of people.
Also, “keep it simple, stupid” is only helpful when the problem can be simplified further. Simplifying things is really hard when we don’t understand them, and mental illness is one of science’s big question marks.
I’m not trying to ad hominem you, and I’m sorry if I came off that way.
Agreed. But mental illness is such a weird and complex thing that it’s even hard for trained professionals to help with. A lot of the posts here about Akrasia helped some, didn’t touch others. I suspect we’d see the same results with this.
For some reason, your first sentence gave me the urge to hug you. I suspect it was a reaction to the fact that someone understood that. I’ve never been able to explain to anyone why “but it isn’t your fault” doesn’t let my brain believe it’s not my fault.
Interesting. I suspect it did, except in particularly strong attacks (if her schizophrenia was periodic rather than constant).
Ooh, cool. I did not know that. Thank you for posting these!
I will do that. I think I may actually have a copy of Chaos lying around. I’ve actually read (most of) Luminosity- I lost my place in the story at one point due to computer issues and never got back to it.
I tried CodeAcademy once, didn’t find it that interesting. I don’t think it used python, though. I’ll check it out. Programming is in general very useful.
If I can find someone to tutor, I’ll try that. It certainly can’t hurt. Thank you!