I'm 20 years old in my first year of university, and I'm probably going to fail the final exams next week. I don't think I'll be having the chance to take advantage of this peak.
When I was in first year (a long time ago), the computer science department was quite new. This meant that courses were held in various different places -- engineering, science, math, etc. Unfortunately, this ultimately meant that I had to pass by the campus pub between every class, with predictable results (drinking age where I lived was 18).
Whether you pass or whether you fail will not have as big an impact as you think now. What is important is understanding how to improve. For me, I staked out a chair in the library with all the foreign students who seemed to live there. I got in to school at 7:30 am and I went home at 5:00 pm. I watched what all those foreign students were doing and copied them.
Later talking with them, I discovered that the reason they lived in the library was because their tuition and living expenses were covered by their extended family. You'd have 20 people sending money that they really couldn't afford just so that one person might get a foreign education and a high paying job to lift everyone out of poverty. If they failed their exams, people in their family would likely die of disease, etc as a result.
So I don't know anything about your situation, but probably it's not as bad as what my friends in the library had to endure. You've got a week. It might not be enough time to salvage first year (like I said, been there, done that). But use that time to understand what you need to do from here. Go to the library. Pick out a seat where you intend to live. Today is a good day to start to see what you can do.
At the end of my first semester at university, my Calc I professor pulled me aside after class for a chat. We talked about a bunch of things, but one piece of advice in particular stuck with me.
He said: "You are lucky to be so privileged - to study at a university for free, to have a supportive family, and to be such a smart and capable student - but you are also quite unlucky. Unlike other less privileged students around the world, you need to create your own drive. Without motivation, you'll have a tough time overcoming the inevitable difficulties you'll face in the future."
So that's what I ended up doing. Firstly, I started to imagine myself being from a much less fortunate background, and therefore treated my studies as a matter of utmost importance. And secondly, I put a target in my mind for what kind of person I want to be in the far future. I visualized this in quite a bit of detail, sometimes even imagining myself being interviewed! (weird, I know)
A little over 5 years later, I'm in a top 10 PhD program in my field. I'm still not certain this is what I want to do for the next 4 years, but I think I'm on top of it for now. Worst case scenario is I drop out with a MS and enter the workforce. Still, I'm immensely thankful that I have the option to think about this. Many people don't.
That's an interesting story, though I find that I oscillate between periods of perceived dread (though, as your Calc professor mentioned, I am privileged in this regard to not have it as much of an issue) and periods of a kind of laid back-ness in which I procrastinate and put things off as much as they possibly could be put off. This has been a recurring problem for me, possibly because the enjoyment of playing games or watching TV is an instant relief and pleasure.. the years of my life after university are distant and contingent.
On one hand I know that I need to work in order to get anywhere, on the other hand I pass it off by saying "you don't have to do this work to succeed". Couple this with the fact that whenever I want to start working there's a huge mass of things to choose from and I don't know where to start with it, or that I have very little willpower to stay with a question if I don't make progress.
It's hard, and I fear I may never learn. I tried to study in the library but alas no habit formed, even after a few weeks. I had diminishing returns by doing that.
Look, I think everyone procrastinates in one form or another. The key is to know when it's time to procrastinate on the procrastination (meta, huh?). In other words, you have to delay your procrastination to get the job done. It differs from person to person, so you need to find a way to do that effectively. I'm also guilty of procrastinating pretty frequently, but I've figured out how to manage it such that it doesn't affect my grades and/or work performance too much.
Regarding your comment on ECE, I also found that I enjoyed some courses more than others (I did enjoy most though). For example, I absolutely hated my power systems and power electronics courses. The latter was one of the only courses I got a B+ in, so I didn't do well in it either. As one of the other commenters mentioned, you need to get used to the fact that you won't enjoy everything in your field/job. The trick is to learn how to deal with it and get it over with, or try to work on it with someone who loves the topic you hate.
One trick for breaking that is to get addicted to improving your craft. For me, it was originally starting an open source project, but there is something magical about a cup of coffee, a big stack of paper, and a math book that you have just the right prerequisite knowledge for.
My problem may be that I don't have much passion for the subject I'm studying (electronic and computer engineering), as I originally applied to do a different degree. Although I find some parts of the subject interesting (digital systems, perhaps some mathematics), others I find hopelessly hard (analogue electronics and physics). A bad part is that I don't even have a way to evaluate my knowledge against the standard which is expected of me; the course is new, and the past papers contain material which may or may not be relevant or taught before. Could I have an impostor syndrome, or do I really not know enough?
Motivation may be what I need, or perhaps it is discipline? I can't stick with things. I will relate an example without hyperbole; today I was trying to find three unknown variables in three equations (A), using matrices first by combining with the identity matrix (I), as (A|I), then forcing zeroes into the bottom left and top right corners of A, and dividing through to transform A into the identity matrix, what is left is A^(-1).
I repeatedly failed to get the correct answer, probably due to some silly arithmetic error. I gave up and started to watch old episodes of Simpsons and read HN.
Do some reading on how to develop willpower. Although I'm not a fan of the rest of the site, I found the Art of Manliness did a decent 3-part on how to cultivate willpower and hone it into productive pursuits.
I had it super easy in school. I was gifted enough to coast through with no study whatsoever. It was basically just an organised social life for me. Same with first-year uni, because school had taught me enough to coast through that. Come second year, however, it was new material and it wasn't forced down my throat with the structure that school provided. I crashed and burned miserably, failing 1 subject and barely scraping through 2 others (i.e.: pass by 2-3%).
It took me until 4th year to teach myself how to teach myself, and how to develop that discipline and willpower necessary to stay focused on a goal. It also took that long to learn how I learn, that is whether I learn best through reading lecture notes, watching examples, doing problems, etc. You're never really taught any of that at school, but you're expected to know it by uni to do self-guided learning. It's a hard ability to pick up, too.
With your example, I'd encourage you to watch some Khan Academy lectures. Maybe listening to and watching exmaple problems works better for you than reading textbooks or lecture notes. Additionally, maths is in particular one of those things where tonnes of practice problems will help reinforce it until it just 'clicks'. In isolation the processes may seem simple as you watch them, but the practice is what helps you identify the underlying patterns and thus know which technique to choose when, and how to identify that you've executed the technique properly.
I'm not a firm believer in what I consider the common definition of passion. You, and only you, have to make your passion. Personally nothing I've tried jumped out of me. Every career has it's enjoyable, intellectually engaging parts, and it's monotonous, weary parts.
If you want to stick with EE and CompE, sit down and list all of the things you enjoy, no matter how seemingly insignificant.
"For what it’s worth: it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over again" - A butchered quote from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
You might benefit from this Coursera course [1] "Learning how to Learn". It addresses many of the issues you've mentioned above. It provides a few helpful tricks to combat procrastination and it's straightforward.
Have you tried drugs? Seriously, even something as basic as making sure you have a minimum amount of caffeine each day (pills are cheap and don't ruin your teeth) can make all the difference, much better than reading and trying to apply the latest in Motivational Techniques or Learning to Learn or plain inspirational writing/shows/music/games. Other drugs like modafinil (http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil) have their benefits too, or melatonin supplements if you need help getting to sleep. Talk to a psychiatrist to see if you need such things yadda yadda, I don't think you'd be all that receptive to "therapy" as a solution but could be wrong. I only mention drugs because your posts reminds me of myself as well as a former close friend. I won't say drugs like caffeine are solely why I'm in a cushy software job and he's doing dishwashing or something (last I got in touch he seemed to have found a happy place in life though) but when we were close we were both chronic procrastinators, I sacrificed a lot of sleep and just managed to finish more things and doing that has a way of compounding your ability to finish more things later (even if much slower than your 'ideal self' that is fully focused all the time).
Another strategy is to study with another person, in person. It can be hard to apply if you're relatively antisocial though, or worry too much about bruising your ego by exposing ignorance. If it helps study with a person you think is 'dumber', like you're doing them a favor, though really it's for yourself, and if nothing else you might be surprised they're not so dumb.
Last thing, learn shortcuts, embrace laziness (one of the Three Virtues of Programming), and automate. Learn some math software. In your example of solving three simultaneous equations, every time I had to do that I would do it with my TI-89 calculator. And not always the same way! But usually I used a slightly different (and imo simpler when not done by hand) matrix method. For 3 equations, get them all in the form of Ax+By+Cz=D, construct a 3x4 matrix with each row containing [Ai Bi Ci Di], and compute the row reduced echelon form to leave you with a diagonal of 1s in the first 3 columns telling you x/y/z correspond to the rows in the fourth column. With the calculator, it's as easy as typing rref([A1,B1,C1,D1; A2,B2,C2,D2; A3,B3,C3,D3]) Nowadays I'd probably just use Octave, which is the same syntax except without the commas. Similarly one course in my program had a section with lots of problems involving partial fractions expansion to help compute an inverse laplace transform. I'd just let my computers do the inverse transform directly, or at least do the partial fraction for me, since doing that crap by hand is tedious and of little value.
look. you'll never get good grades, because you don't like school. neither did i. i'd never, ever, ever go back to graduate school. getting C's and barely graduating is perfectly fine. that's a lot better than going crazy trying to excel at something you detest, and dropping out from mental anguish. (very common)
once you really understand this, it takes a tremendous burden off of your own mental state.
then, the trick is to just force yourself to do just enough work to finish with a degree, so that your money is not wasted. and doing that is not really hard. it really isn't.
your goal should be to get on with the rest of your life, not feel bad about the fact that you hate school.
Just because you don't make it in university doesn't mean you can't do some amazing things.
I failed my oral exams in the Math Ph. D. Instead of retaking them, I left with a Master's, made a lot of money and started my own company which now has over 4 million users.
Also, forget about the peak, if you build value for yourself, you'll have more every year. If you're building value for others and earning money, then invest it somewhere that makes a difference.
In fact, if money is what you're after you are probably better of getting the degree and then leaving academics, I don't know many people who stayed in the academic circuit and ended up being well off.
In academia, only those who get tenured professorships are sitting pretty. And they get to sit pretty for decades. Everyone else has to hustle to get their crumbs. I know people who are teaching adjuncts and they get paid crumbs ( $2 or $3K PER SEMESTER ). This is at a highly competitive university where tuition + board is $80K. I could not believe it.
3K per semester with an advanced degree? That's insane. You earn more being a graduate student. Is that a non-STEM field? A regular job would be a much better option.
From the abstract: "Our main finding is that the developmental curve of the estimated algorithmic complexity of responses is similar to what may be expected of a measure of higher cognitive abilities, with a performance peak around 25 and a decline starting around 60"
Based on this and the points in the scatter plot, it looks to me like you have 40 years or so of mostly the same "behavioral complexity" you do now, in expectancy, but with the added benefit of accumulated knowledge. For most tasks, my bet is that the right accumulation of knowledge and learned intuition is a larger factor than any sort of base generative ability. So, rather than giving up, I'd start compounding that learning now, with an eye towards the long term...
"I'm probably going to fail the final exams next week."
You can improve on mental toughness to control emotion. It is not a fixed skill. Four skills needed to overcome ^fear^ and ^panic^ is through control of the limbic system: [0]
- Positive self talk
- Goal setting of tasks
- Mental rehearsal of tasks
- Arousal control (breathing)
I've found that laziness is sometimes fear in disguise. I don't know how that contributes, but whatever I don't care to explain; I'll be downvoted anyways.
I would rather hope to fail than to slip by with 40%-60%. You'll waste 5 years of your life (because such slackers rarely get it done in 4) and come out not knowing much and forgetting that little bit too after a year or so. I can't really give a personal cautionary tale (I am a slacker, but of the courses I passed I tried to do well at least on the final and still remember a lot of details plus where to refresh memories) but I see it often enough in others. Some of them are fine with it, some of them regret it, some of them double down and find a new school / degree program. Take a close look at what you want from the university system -- little learning but socialization or just a simple piece of paper (they look a lot nicer in a frame) is entirely justifiable, just consider how you might judge your choices in hindsight once you're at the end (as well as have an idea of what you'll do at the end).
