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    49. How to succeed in a cramming-based academic system?

      Ask (advice)
      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...

      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?
      Same with my latest interest: Law. I've watched a few (mock) court cases and researched whatever questions I came up with, to get an understanding of how courts worked, and had a look at the cited laws.

      In physics tests I end up running out of time because whenever I forget an equation I need, I try to intuit/derive it, which I would manage given enough time.

      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?

      19 votes