I'm an intuitive learner. I learn by constantly asking questions, the answers to which i can then effortlessly remember. By messing around and seeing what happens, and then asking why. Lecturers have been enthusiastic about my approach but said I'm going to struggle because the school system in my country wasn't designed for people who learn like this. I want to kill myself.

The way I see myself learning stuff:

• Here's a fresh store-bought kombucha scoby
• Here's a scoby from the same store that I've been growing for 6 weeks
• If I sequenced the DNA from equivalent cells in each of these scobys, would I find any differences? Why?

The way we are actually expected to learn stuff:

• Listening to a lecturer talk for 12×2 hours, and/or reading the referenced literature. Anything mentioned could be on the test.

I have been trying to do it the mainstream way anyway, but I am getting such bad grades that I've had to re-take a year. Even if I found strategies to help me focus I'd still clearly have a competitive disadvantage to people to whom this approach comes naturally. This feels unfair since I know there is a way that I could learn about my field as effortlessly as other people do listening to these lectures.

How does someone like me succeed in academia instead of just scraping through?

I understand that my prefered methpd which I outlined is what you do at PhD level. I'm afraid that by force-feeding my brain all this information that it currently sees as irrelevant, I will kill my curiousity, which I don't want to do because it's the thing that's allowed me to get this far with practically no effort (I went through the archetypal Smart Kid thing in middle school).

For context, I'm in 1st year bachelor's biochemistry (repeating the year). Although I think that at least in my country, all university courses have the format I described.

Since I am also struggling with ADHD I honestly feel like giving up on Uni and going for some sort of apprentiship-style thing. I would like to have a degree though because it's sort of a requirement nowadays and I am genuinely interested in my subject area. Alternatively, what kind of professions seek my method of inquisitively deep-diving into stuff, as I described?

I am looking for practical ways to prove the Earth is round using materials accessible to the average person. I have zero interest in disproving Flat Earth folks.

I am inspired by Dan Olson's (Folding Ideas) excellent video where he is able to do this measuring the curvature of a lake near his home that has a very specific geography that lends itself to this sort of experiment. I've seen all sorts of ways to prove this measuring shadows and poles, using gyroscopes, etc. and wanted to know if there are any practical guides for proving once and for all that the Earth is round for yourself relying on nothing more than experimentation.

What I'm not looking for:

• Math relying on flight times/charts
• Video/picture evidence
• Deductive proofs built on agreed upon premises
• Expensive tests
• Extremely time consuming projects
• Underwhelming results (relying on a probabilistic argument for a round Earth from the evidence.)

What I am looking for:

• Practical experiments
• Things I could potentially do without spending much money
• Tests that aren't largely comprised of accepting someone else's research
• Potentially math-heavy evidence
• Results that are strong and conclusive

I've thought of finding some easy to test version of Eratosthenes' proof using two poles. I've also thought about using a balloon and sending something to space like what is done in this Tom Scott video. Nothing seems well documented in such a way as for me to be able to follow it at home.

TL;DR: I think it would be a meaningful experience to have the power to prove the Earth is round by myself, for myself. I can only compare this desire to the desire a child with a telescope has when wishing to observe Saturn or Mars themselves for the first time. It's not to prove anything or to settle doubts, but for the personal value of independently observing this astronomical fact oneself.