My results were not very remarkable in the first years, except maybe in my mother tongue, French. I was average (then good, thanks to some efforts) in maths for most of my scolarity. After the beginning of the collège (11 years old), I was the best or amongst the best in every subject, except maths, and of course sports. Without having to make efforts, except in maths. A more stimulating environment would have greatly advantaged me, because all that didn't give me the sense of effort. I mean : even at the baccalauréat, at 17 years old, I ended up with some 20/20 (for example in Spanish), and I can't say that was the result of efforts. I learned to work, yes, but working effortlessly is not the same thing...
Quote:
It's a bit strange. When I voluntarily research my own special interests, I'm very motivated and I end up learning alot. When the research becomes mandatory, then I associate that with the stress of exams and grades and it's not so much fun anymore. It's just something that I will have to get over if I plan to get anywhere with my academic career.
This is my problem too.
I'm 23 now, and I'm preparing the most demanding competitive examination in order to become a professor (not really because I'd like to teach at high school, but because it's a prerequisite if I want to do research and teach at university), the
agrégation. I've completed my Master degree last year and it was über cool, because I had the liberty to do my research as I wished. I effortlessly plunged into an immense bibliography, and wrote a more than 200 pages
mémoire (around 100 pages is the usual required quantity) that got a mark I'm ashamed to reveal because it makes other think I possess the self-confidence that I am actually devoid of.
Well, this university year is wholly different. We are forced to prepare to pass academic exercises, we have an imposed program... Although I like most of the works we have to master, the mere fact that it has been imposed, that it is mandatory, prevents me from having the kind of natural ease I found myself "swiming" into last year. While I could write pages and pages overnight, and read hundred of pages in the wake, then, I find myself struggling now with things that are, paradoxically, easier than original research (even though it's still very demanding), because I cannot approach these matters, as it seems, through my special interest-driven mode of learning and working (and I hate my brain for that). And there is the problem of efforts : it's only now, after five years of university (and more years of school of course), that I'm confronted to a situation where I need to do efforts if I want to pass this particular competitive exam. Which makes me think that I would have profited from a more demanding academic environment sooner in life, that would have made me go past my natural "laziness". I envy those who have had that chance.