Leo, should I throw in the towl for a more direct path?

[SamC]

Hi!

I am a soon to be 22 year old that have studied the last 3-4 years for a standardized test so that I can get into university and become a psychologist.  I really struggle honestly and a part of me wants to throw in the towl.

The language part of the test I do fine on but the math part makes me want to kill myself, lol. It's like my brain is not wired for this shit and I feel so incredibly stupied.

I easly understand spirituality, psychology, philosophy, history, music ect but for some reason math creates this weird friction in my mind.

My life purpose is to give people people deep insights about themselves through music, coaching and psychedelic therapy. The plan has thus far been to first go and become a psychologist and then find a way to make my vision into a reality.

A part of me wants to give up, partly because it seems like the Universe is nudging me in a different direction to find a more direct path.

Should I give up? Is there an alternative more direct path that I neglect and that makes more sense? Any other thoughts?

@Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

How exactly do you imagine this study to go when you already need 3+ years to even get accepted into it?

Don't waste your time trying to jump through hoops you're clearly not made for.

How do you want to give people insights? Writing, speaking, music? Figure that out, focus on mastering said skill and educate yourself.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Nilsi

[SamC]

11 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

How exactly do you imagine this study to go when you already need 3+ years to even get accepted into it?

Don't waste your time trying to jump through hoops you're clearly not made for.

How do you want to give people insights? Writing, speaking, music? Figure that out, focus on mastering said skill and educate yourself.

Because I am not going to study math, I am going to study psychology but I hear you. Thanks for the feedback

[Nilsi]

5 minutes ago, SamC said:

Because I am not going to study math, I am going to study psychology but I hear you. Thanks for the feedback

There's a reason they test for this stuff.

I studied psychology myself and also had to do such an exam.

You need a certain amount of fluid intelligence when studying psychology and if you don't have that you will just torture yourself unnecessarily.

Figure out what you're good at and what you like doing. University is for the people that are too lazy to think for themselves and walk their own path.

[EugeneTheSage]

I think you shouldn't make excuses and seek shortcuts. Figure out how to improve your math skills.

 

[Asayake]

Judging by the fact that you're still quite young it's not too late for you to study psychology still if you want. I agree with Eugene, if you could get the math figured out that could be nice. 

You could research how to study maths more effeciantly, watch YouTube videos going through different math problems in Swedish. You could get paid help with studying math if you got some money to spare. If you want to become a psychologist you should really start taking your HP studies seriously. You need to study math everyday and find the charm in it and self exam yourself online every month to track your progress. Perhaps you knew all of this already but I figured it was worth pointing out anyways. There's a possibility that you really want to become a psychologist but that you're not motivated enough about HP because it's a bit of an illusion/it doesn't feel like studying to become a psychologist when you're studying maths. You need to contemplate that a bit to see clearly what you need to do to become a psychologist so that you become motivated to study maths consistently and work on improving your study technique itself.

 

However there's also a possibility that you don't want to become a psychologist and that's why you're not motivated to go through with the math studying thing, which is also fine. Perhaps you're more interested in alternative healing and therapy styles not taught in psychology at university. A psychology degree could still be useful but it's not a must to help others. It's still possible. Just more difficult and you got to make it happen more by yourself. It could even be a bit of an indirect route as you say if what you want to work with isn't directly related to the things you learn in University. You should lookup precisely what they study at the psychology program and consider if those are things you find interesting/valuable. Another thing to consider is that you would meet a lot of people your age who are interesred in psychology if you went to Uni which could be quite valuable and fun.

To do a more direct path by yourself you need to become very knowledgeable in the things where you want to become valuable to others. You want to become valuable to others to be able to make a living doing what you do. Wether it's having private counseling calls or studying under some authority independent of the University there are many alternative paths. But they're most likely not going to be less rough than studying for HP. But anything becomes more bearable when it feels more aligned with what you want to do. No one can make this call but yourself, you need to take all things into consideration, think things through and then go with your gut. 

Good luck!

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by Asayake

[SamC]

On 2023-02-10 at 6:32 PM, EugeneTheSage said:

I think you shouldn't make excuses and seek shortcuts. Figure out how to improve your math skills.

 

I appreciate that. I will.

15 hours ago, Asayake said:

Judging by the fact that you're still quite young it's not too late for you to study psychology still if you want. I agree with Eugene, if you could get the math figured out that could be nice. 

You could research how to study maths more effeciantly, watch YouTube videos going through different math problems in Swedish. You could get paid help with studying math if you got some money to spare. If you want to become a psychologist you should really start taking your HP studies seriously. You need to study math everyday and find the charm in it and self exam yourself online every month to track your progress. Perhaps you knew all of this already but I figured it was worth pointing out anyways. There's a possibility that you really want to become a psychologist but that you're not motivated enough about HP because it's a bit of an illusion/it doesn't feel like studying to become a psychologist when you're studying maths. You need to contemplate that a bit to see clearly what you need to do to become a psychologist so that you become motivated to study maths consistently and work on improving your study technique itself.

 

However there's also a possibility that you don't want to become a psychologist and that's why you're not motivated to go through with the math studying thing, which is also fine. Perhaps you're more interested in alternative healing and therapy styles not taught in psychology at university. A psychology degree could still be useful but it's not a must to help others. It's still possible. Just more difficult and you got to make it happen more by yourself. It could even be a bit of an indirect route as you say if what you want to work with isn't directly related to the things you learn in University. You should lookup precisely what they study at the psychology program and consider if those are things you find interesting/valuable. Another thing to consider is that you would meet a lot of people your age who are interesred in psychology if you went to Uni which could be quite valuable and fun.

To do a more direct path by yourself you need to become very knowledgeable in the things where you want to become valuable to others. You want to become valuable to others to be able to make a living doing what you do. Wether it's having private counseling calls or studying under some authority independent of the University there are many alternative paths. But they're most likely not going to be less rough than studying for HP. But anything becomes more bearable when it feels more aligned with what you want to do. No one can make this call but yourself, you need to take all things into consideration, think things through and then go with your gut. 

Good luck!

 

This post encourged me so much. Thanks man. Yeah HP is quite the illusion, but I think it's the way to go.

[Leo Gura]

I was bad at math too. It was my weakest area.

You can just buckle down and grind through it. It won't matter once you get a real job. No one cares about your math.

But only you can decide whether quitting is right for you. Don't outsource your executive decisions to others. That's a bad habit.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

I am the opposite. Math was always definitely easier for me to understand than language arts and writing.

I've actually always envied people who are naturally good at writing and language arts.

9 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I was bad at math too. It was my weakest area.

You can just buckle down and grind through it. It won't matter once you get a real job. No one cares about your math.

Besides philosophy and spirituality, what was your strongest area in school?

Edited February 13, 2023 by Hardkill

[Girzo]

@SamC You know that psychologists have to read a lot and understand statistics to basic degree, to understand scientific papers and data correctly? So it's not like you are learning something that will be completely useless later. You need to master this basic level of Maths required to pass the exam. Don't disregard it, because you think it is useless for psychologists. Some Maths is always useful. Logical thinking even more.

[Leo Gura]

9 hours ago, Hardkill said:

Besides philosophy and spirituality, what was your strongest area in school?

I was good at anything non-math. Even pretty good at physics.

The issue was that math never interested me. So I never got good at it.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Leo Gura

[spiritual memes]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It won't matter once you get a real job. No one cares about your math.

unless you work in any STEM field... Then they probably do care

[spiritual memes]

As someone who is quite good at math, its not as difficult as you might think. In most subjects, memorisation and practice is sufficient to learn but that isn't the case for maths. Focus on understanding the underlying abstract concepts rather than trying to memorise things.

[The Mystical Man]

I wasn't good at anything. Not even English ?

I wish I had studied psychology, maybe even psychiatry. Alas, it's too late ?

Edited February 13, 2023 by The Mystical Man

[Phoebe]

@Leo Gura Is there a way for me to DM you? Apparently I get to send “0 messages per day”.

[Ninja_pig]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I was good at anything non-math. Even pretty good at physics.

How in the world is physics non-math?

[Ninja_pig]

Leo gives some pretty good advice here. Be careful not to go looking for people who tell you that it's okay to give up on your dreams.

There are many great online resources to get better with math skills. Kahn academy has a free high quality training course for the SAT. https://www.khanacademy.org/sat/

As a math person I personally think that math is like playing an instrument - practicing consistently is the only way to improve. Don't be discouraged if it is super boring and difficult at first because, like an instrument, you magically get better eventually by simply trying consistently. Practice math test questions for an hour a day for a month and if you don't notice any improvement then I hereby give you permission to give up on getting into college.

"Failure is basically irrelevant unless it is catastrophic."

-Elon Musk

"What if"

-David Goggins

[PenguinPablo]

When I took stimulants (ADHD medication) I was a fucking math wiz. The reason math was a hard subject for me was because I didn't have enough interest in it so my attention constantly waned and therefore I was perpetually behind. On stimulants though my mind saw those Calculus problems like fun puzzles to be solved. Could help to get your brain dialed in at least for the math material. 

I'll tell you one thing. I wish I would have been diagnosed with ADHD long ago. I would be a lot further in my professional career, instead of lost in my philosophical ideals.

[Snader]

I used to be bad at math in high school, but then there was a girl in my class I had a crush on, who was a straight A student and was always competing with others, especially in math. I decided to impress her and started putting effort into math and soon became an A student as well. I ended up dating her and after our little romance, my interest in math dropped down, which led me to have an epiphany that my grades were precisely proportional to my level of motivation. So I learned that I really wasn't bad at math, but I just had never had proper force motivating me before. 

Chances are that you are suffering from lack of motivaton, or the feeling of powerelessness. If it's the latter, then it's good to remember that in the end it's actually a really small area of math you need to handle in those tests; usually it's just statistics. It's a small area but challenging enough to require effort and input. It might seem overwhelming, but once you get on track, it starts making sense surprisingly much. If you can't put in the effort, then it might not be a bad idea to check  your motives one more time.

I know people who applied to psychology. One guy I know got in the secound time he applied, another one applied at least 4 times, not sure if he ever got in. What seperates those two people is the fact that the guy who got in worked his ass out and attended a math course that was designed for the test, whereas the other guy didn't. And guess what, the guy who got in was bad at math.

 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Snader

[Ves]

I think it's really going to depend on how much time you want to put into learning math. I'm fairly confident that, with enough time, you could learn enough math such that the exam isn't very difficult for you. This may require relearning a lot of basic math from scratch. I say this as somebody with a publication in pure math.

However, given that you hate math, this may not be the best path forward; Leo's path may be a better alternative. I think the cost of his approach is that any time you do encounter math in your degree, it's always going to be fairly confusing and painful. For a psych degree, you probably won't need to endure too much, so I think this is a valid tradeoff to make. I think my only remaining worry is that the "memorize and grind through" approach may end up being more work in the long run, but it's hard to say. Deeply learning a lot of math concepts takes a lot of time as well.