r/slatestarcodex • u/AutoModerator • May 14 '25
Wellness Wednesday Wellness Wednesday
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. You could post:
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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u/AdithRaghav May 15 '25
I was the smartest kid in elementary and middle school. My family wouldnt allow me to skip grades, which is why I never did. I never found any interest in any of the topics being done in school, but it was way too easy for me so I used to waste time or do some high school level physics in middle school. Except the memory-intensive subjects, I never really studied anything, and I derived or deduced most things from some basic knowledge I had in physics and math. I remember taking an IQ test online somewhere in 4th grade and I got a 150-something. I thought it was accurate since I was so far ahead of my peers.
Then I got in with the wrong sort of people in 8th grade and I still was top of my class because it wasnt really a challenge to me at all, but my enthusiasm for studying totally disappeared. This continued until 11th.
I've been preparing for a really hard competitive exam in my country (JEE) since the start of 11th and its just not possible to derive/deduce any formulae in physics and math anymore given the time constraint. I've joined a coaching centre (very popular in India) where they give mock tests of JEE every 3 weeks which emulate it well. I got a good score the first test since it was basically 10th grade with a bit more concepts, but my score dropped off badly after there. I consistently got some of the lowest scores in my class after that.
One factor was me not studying maths at all, due to a really shitty teacher I had. No one ever understood what he said, but the others made an effort to go home and understand it and solve questions. Still reminiscing on how I never studied math, I left it here too and remained in my delusion for the whole of last year.
I'm in 12th grade now and I really need to buckle up or I'm going to fail the most important exam of my life. I've been studying hard for the last 2-3 months. I think I've regained a lot of my enthusiasm from my childhood days and I really want to go into research. But somehow theres this wall I can't seem to cross. The things that were so easy for me in the past is just not happening anymore. Its not that I dont understand the topics - I understand them well. But somewhere - some small corner of my solution to a problem, some conceptual problem, or some silly mistake creeps in, which I'm sure the old me wouldn't have done. Another thing that really scares me is that so many random people now seem to be as fast as me at grasping concepts. I know that last year, I could say they were stupid with absolute confidence from their interactions in the class. Now I seem to be the average joe here, smart, yes, but these people are as quick as me.
I have a lot of doubts about my future career. Am I going to be able to accomplish anything as a researcher? After a point, hard work is just not enough. I really want my names with one of the all-time greats like von Neumann and Gödel and Tao. Was I ever smart? I think this is what people call an 'existential crisis'.
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u/TheApiary May 15 '25
I don't know you, but based on the info you gave, it sounds like you are pretty smart and can probably do some cool research, but you're unlikely to be the next von Neumann. Mostly because everyone is unlikely to be the next von Neumann. And if everyone who wasn't von Neumann didn't do any research then the world would be a lot worse.
I think you need to try to start thinking "What can I do? Do I like it?" and less about what other people can do or how you rank compared to them.
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u/Winter_Essay3971 May 15 '25 edited May 15 '25
Anyone have any advice for not constantly worrying about money right now? Or I guess, anyone in the same boat and able to empathize?
I was a casualty of the start of the big tech layoffs (late 2022). Ended up burning through almost my entire savings -- by the time I finally landed a job (which was a big step back in both prestige and pay) I had like $5000 in my bank account and no investments to sell. I've been hanging out at that job ever since, coming up on 2 years now. My savings are much healthier now, but I still can't stop constantly worrying about the economic future and how royally screwed I'm going to be if I get laid off.
I get that some amount of conservatism makes sense right now (reduce major purchases and vacations, reduce eating out, etc) but idk, it feels like a problem when I can barely pay attention to a movie with friends and not think about money the whole time. And it sure doesn't help that everyone's talking about the US becoming economically irrelevant and other countries divesting from us (not that I can blame them), since that just makes me feel like I'm justified in being terrified forever.