careers advice for a stereotypical nerd

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What career should I aim for? I've wanted to be a scientist since I was about ten but I was too young to evaluate whether it was the best career choice; I was influenced too much by the biographies of famous scientists and abysmally ignorant of the fact that if I had any realistic chance of becoming one then I would be one of those child prodigies in the newspapers and not just another schoolkid with 'emotional and behavioral problems'. I don't want to spend my life publishing papers that nobody reads on obscure topics if it means essentially murdering the hundreds of africans that I might have saved by getting a better paid job and donating the extra money to the top Givewell charities. Until a few days ago I refused to seriously consider whether I should choose a different career even though it should have been obvious that the emotional attachment that I have to my ambitions was suspiciously similar to that which I had to overcome when I left religion.

I got sucked into an undergraduate summer research project in pure maths. Now that it's over, is it better to continue working on the problems for their signaling value to future employers or to have more free time for autodidacting subjects that I am more interested in and that are more likely to be useful?

What should I do about long-term problems with underachievement? My grades would be higher if I only spent some time learning to set out working properly, actually turned up to lectures and could motivate myself to check my answers at the end of exams instead of finishing early and sitting out and now that I'm going into honors grades are actually going to count towards future career opportunities. But I'm naturally a visual-spatial thinker and baulk at the tedium of having to write things down step-by-step and even if do turn up to lectures my mind shuts down because I can't stand the repetitiveness of it so if there's anything in the lecture that I didn't know beforehand then I end up missing it.

I'll need to find a way of tolerating boredom if I am to ever to cope with having a job. I can spend all day on my own staring out of the window and going on long runs without getting bored but just a few minutes of listening to small talk or having to bear sensory overstimulation with nothing to distract me from it leave me seething. My difficulties with social anxiety seem to be a subconscious way of getting out of banal socialization; during the summer internship I could talk without always going into a mumbling panic and enjoy socializing for the first time because some of the conversations were interesting enough to me that I wanted to try. So I'll need a career that is engaging or I won't be able to work at all and it must be suitable for introverts.

I was too intimidated to go into science when I was your age, because I could not handle the discrimination from my physics teacher and physics peers (all men) at that age ( I am not a man). Also, I had doubts about my ability to be a scientist if I was not absolutely brilliant in math. Also, I was bogged down by the perception that scientists have to be brilliant, otherwise they cannot be scientists. I went to an elite university where people didn't seem to take science courses just for the fun of it. What a shame!

As an adult, I have rediscovered science, and I LOVE it. I also learned that it's possible to have a career in science and do important solid work just by having a solid method. You don't have to be brilliant in math, either. But it certainly helps to have a passion for what you do. I would not hesitate to go into science if I were just ten years younger, given what I know now. At the smaller university where I just completed a Masters (in a non-science field), I took a lot of science classes and had such a great time! Also, I felt my aspie nature was more accepted in the science department, and my aspie interest in questioning conventional expectations and desire to figure out the truth behind stuff is innately suited to a career in science, but pretty much not suited for many other careers. I wish i had known this when I was younger! It's much better to have your personality suited to your field. However I didn't know I was aspie until just recently.

There are so many scientists who do important work that has potential to have a huge effect on humanity. It's a mistake to think that scientists by nature are condemned to toil on obscure questions of no practical importance. You need to seek out a mentor whose work inspires you.

About underachievement-- sounds like you have not yet found the field in which you will thrive. You will eventually do the best work in a field that is fun to you. If you are having fun, you will get good at your field. Work should be a pleasure, not a drag. If it's a drag, you should find a department you like better.