Overcoming Academic Setbacks: Coping with Illness and Anxiety in College

[RocketSurgery]

I will try and take it easy but my mind seems to have infinite clarity in that state and I love it. Now that finals are done though I'm still self studying out of Apostol's Calculus but have stopped drinking vault. I'm drinking a lot of caffeine free stuff and finished my last vault case until next semester. Thanks for the heads up though. I hope you get your anxiety stuff worked out and I'm glad it isn't hurting your academic performance.

 

[mathwonk]

getting into grad school is a matter of impressing someone. when i was out of school teaching at a small college, but interested in going back, i was literally recruited to a different school from the one i was applying to by one of my letter writers.

talent is really scarce, grades are just grades. if someone thinks you are good, you will get in.

as one of my best teachers ever put it about phd prelims being there for the students benefit: "if you cannot impress anyone beforehand that you are able to do a phd, still you can pass prelims and then someone will have to take you on."

good grades are there as a backup if no one knows or thinks you are good otherwise.

there is another thread here where they have persistently refused to listen to my advice that the difference between making A's for 4 years, or A's for the last 2 years, is minor compared to what impression you make on people now.

in my view many people do not understand how decisions are made, or how little grades are thought to reveal about someone. of course at some point you have to have them, to show you can follow the rules and do well by arbitrary standards.

but really brilliant people are cut a lot of slack for a long time. there are harvard professors who do not even have BA degrees.

still i admit, for the rest of us, good grades are helpful, but they are not everything.

after being recruited to grad school by my letter writer, i made sure i got all A's for the next three years. but a smarter classmate was still noticed as such and duly rewarded.

 

[RocketSurgery]

Thanks Mathwonk. That does make a lot of sense. I always thought grades weren't very indicative of how well someone would do after school. It seems that what makes a good mathematician (or possibly physicist) hinges more on his/her creativity; and the knowledge you gained in school (shown by grades) is necessary for success in the field but not a sufficient condition for success.

 

[RocketSurgery]

Also since you mentioned impressing the people...

I have notebooks filled with my original research as well as work I've done on my own out of Apostol's calculus and a few other texts because the texts my school usually use are boring calculation only texts. Do you think it would be to my benefit to keep these notebooks as a record of what I do outside of class? I was planning on keeping my research notebook either way of course though.

 

[mathwonk]

well it might help in an interview to mention one or two especially nice pieces of work you have done.

 

[wk1989]

II started getting strange sensations of pain and pressure in the head, tingling sensations, digestive disturbances, a sense of light headedness or feeling of being off balance, fatigue, and a sense of nervousness and irritability coupled with a sense of dread that something was seriously wrong with my health.

As have I, I'm not sure if this can be classified as an illness though. Right now it does not seem to be affecting me too much at all but I'll see how things go.