Why do some people get A's without lifting a finger while the rest of us have to bust are ass to get a B...

I didn't have to do it in high school, but I did have to study to get A's in college.

Some people got it, some people don't.

Better comprehension and memory

What takes you three times to read over to fully grasp takes me but a brief skim

Not a big deal, bud

Tips on study methods?

>Work smarter not harder and exploit any resources you can, between office hours, TA, email, classmates, tutoring center, and the shitloads of online material

Literally on his post, moron.

Resources aren't methods, moron.

PatrickJMT, Khan Academy, for starters

IQ is genetic

They won the genetic lottery.

Junior EE in University with 4.0.

I literally live in the library.

Set your standards higher. It's as simple as that. I was a B student until I decided that I have to get A+s. It has now become standard and anything less makes me feel bad. Remember, you're just an animal and animals can be trained.

Speaking from experience, they probably already did the reading while you were out doing whatever vices you have. Come lecture time they only had to have enough of a passing interest to go "Yeah I read that. Next."

lifting a finger is relative to your motivation; I enjoy thinking about complex problems and I learn the basic shit in the process of being curious and thinking a lot

if you measured my pure amount of time spent "studying" it'd be more than anyone, but because I enjoy it I feel like I spend no time at all

only downside is if I don't care about something then lmao @ the idea of even putting in the effort to study, which in that case I rely on a combination of being really good at guessing/being right on everything else to pull an A- average

t. grad student

This is very accurate

>studying in a library filled with college students
>leaving your dorm room for anything but classes
We arent all filthy normies dude

You dont understand.

I have this one spot in the lowest floors of the library where there's one seat facing the wall with a table. To get there its practically a maze with the table being at a dead end. I hide the seat within the bookshelves when I leave so I can always have that spot.

If it's taken, I study within the bookshelves in a section no one goes to (bookshelves move).

Really comfy and I get tons of work done. I never see anyone down there.

I stopped trying, now I almost get C's from absolute 0 effort.

I enjoy the subjects and pay attention to everything in class. I also like to debate the subject with the teacher a bit so I can better grasp it.
I never study and I get straight A's.

>hy do some people get A's without lifting a finger while the rest of us have to bust are ass to get a B?
Because you're legitimately stupid and/or lazy, especially if you believe this.

If I say I work hard and fuck up, everyone will know I'm not as smart as I seem to be. If I act apathetic, no one is surprised when I make a mistake.

>Why do some people get A's without lifting a finger
We're smarter than you.

>the rest of us have to bust are ass to get a B?
You're stupid.

>Is studying a meme?
Yes. There is no reason why anyone should ever study, we are better than chinks for a reason.
Practicing however is not a meme.

>Am I just wasting my time?
Maybe.

These:

> tfw passed 3 years of medschool only ever revising a week before exams
> friends who revised for months stilll failed
BRAINLETS WILL THEY EVER?

Literally me. The lacking motivation part really pains me sometimes. I still put the effort to try and study mandatory subjects but it feels like a complete waste of time as I keep getting distracted by other ideas non stop.

100% of successful mathematicians have studied their ass off, though, at least by grad school. If your goal is to just get A's and get your 300k starting salary (lul), then fine. But the non brainlets work as hard as they can to learn as much a possible.

Some people have impressive memory capacities, and others try to understand the material.

IQ

Is it harder for older students to learn than it is for younger students? As far as neuroplasticity and whatnot.

I'm mid-twenties, starting my 3rd year of a physics major next fall. Are there any neurological consequences to having been lazy in my youth? As in, will I be able to develop into the same intellectual caliber as I would have if I had been serious about studying at an earlier age? Or did I basically stunt my potential by being indolent?

Any links to research that's been conducted on this matter would br greatly appreciated.

what i have noticed is that the mature students who end up doing bad, do bad because they have a harder time remembering their highschool studies. This usually only happens in first year, so you're probably fine m8

Some people are better at regurgitating information than others.

Its genetics. Plompfkin found that up to one letter grade is influenced by genetics. The effort by a G E N E T I C A L L Y I N F E R I O R M A L E to get a B is equal to the effort of someone on the other end getting an A.

*Plomin

>100% of successful mathematicians have studied their ass off
gauss

>mfw tutoring smoothbrains
>>dur how much do you study???
Just fucking go to the class and get an A, what the fuck is the big deal?

Are we talking about college? In my case i'd settle for B's if i thought the course was meh. Having to work part time jobs to make ends meet sucks when you actually want to study.

That being said, studying smartly is WAY more important than studying hard. I'd recommend you to think of knowledge hierarchically.

>have friend
>he always scores in the top or near the top of the class for every class
>always says that he never studies
>feel like a brainlet
>we become roommates
>turns out that he studies way more than me
>he is always a chapter ahead of the class

I was pissed when I found out.

>rest of us

woah there, brainlet! dont try to lump me in with your lamentations.

I hide this from my roommate. 2 years in and he still doesn't know how much I study. I only use pdf versions of my textbooks (very easy to find for the formal math courses, God bless), and use a small notebook to write in. If he knocks on my door, I switch from the pdf program to facebook or something, while pushing the notebook away so he can't see it.

luck of the draw on teachers is part of it

For example I just finished a Physics 201 course with a B.
I had a 100% Lab average, and a 97.5% homework average. My testing average however, was ~65%.
Was I getting answers wrong? Nope.

Got every single problem on the test right (except 1 early kinematics problem because I don't remember all my trig identities/rules/formulas off the top of my head). Part of the problems though was to explain the how and why of our process in solving the problem. It didn't mater if your reasoning was logical and worked. If it did not match his particular approach to the problem he would mark it wrong.
This would have been manageable but he also refused to return tests so that we could understand why he didn't like our approach. His reasoning was that we may potentially help future students so all he would do is tell us which of his lecture videos to re-watch (this was an online class through my CC that was run by one of the big State Unis).
Again this would have still been manageable but he could barely speak English and he did not edit the lecture videos at all. He would actually make mistakes, acknowledge that he fucked up, and then instead of going back and explaining HOW he messed up (or just editing out the fuck up and doing it right), he would just continue on like he didn't make a mistake.

It was highly frustrating as I'm typically a straight A student.

Because we lie about not studying, the people in this thread calling you a brainlet are just keeping the mask on.

Socialize with other people in your major, you should mostly all have the same classes. Study together.
I personally found that trying to study at home doesn't work, too many distractions.
Go to the library, meet with your group at the library. Use each other to figure out what is important to know for your class and the group gives you a chance to teach each other the parts that you get that they don't. Teaching and explaining a concept versus just working problems will solidify your understanding.

For instance me and my friends all make extra bucks working at the tutoring center, we cover the first two years of physics and just about every single math class. Although we are engineers and not mathematicians (don't want to be some poor fag math major) we are absolute experts due to the tutoring.

So..... Get a group of friends, if you're the smartest person in the group you're in the wrong group. Be a tutor if you have free time, and don't study at home or in your dorm. Go to a library, a dedicated place of study. If you're mindlessly just solving problems you're doing it wrong. You need to understand what you're doing, but you also need to be able to solve problems.

Start doing well and when people ask you just shrug and say "I don't really study, it's just easy" and watch as they deep down despise you.

Holy shit dude fucking why

I ran across this today; it seems relevant.

>A look inside Feynman's calculus notebook
physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.9099/full/

1. Everyone is born with differing talents.
2. Some people are better at picking classes
>female next to me in diff eq chatting me up before first class
>mentions how she has bad testing anxiety and hopes the grading scale doesn't heavily favor tests (I had multi var calc with her and already knew this from her test scores)
>prof comes in and runs through syllabus
>six exams in the class, each question is worth five points, grade is the sum of how many points you get
>hfw
>proceeds to not drop the class and switch to the prof that splits final grade equally between tests, homeworks, and participation
>both of there grading policies were on ratemyproffessor
And that combined with her gender is why she'll struggle to get a good grade in the class.

Because I was always one of the kids who would do little and get good grades, but I can't fucking do that while studying pure math, so I have to compensate. Gotta appear as smart as possible. My roommate might hire me one day.

I was one of those people who would get A's in math, physics, etc. without lifting a finger. I've spent around a decade smoking a lot of marijuana and drinking to excess and am now only a shadow of my former self.

The reasons I could do it was simple:
Parents are both engineers / quant types. Parents look at the world and describe it as quants / engineers do. This is a good foundation to begin understanding the world as a child (imagine your parents giving correct measurements, describing math and science concepts, asking me logic based questions to get me to think and encouraging thought and inquiry).

My father would always describe things to me as he understood them (he did not dumb things down is what I mean to say). For example, when I was a child and started asking about the world I remember him describing atoms, quarks, etc.

I also had a predisposition for math / science problems; whereas my peers would look at the problem and begin to get frustrated or fearful (negative emotions), I always saw it as a fun puzzle.

My father designs mass spectrometers (majored in Mechanical Engineering), mother majored in Math and CS, worked in software (Apple, Xerox PARC, etc).

There's very likely a genetic component here, in addition to the upbringing (who knows though). Math / science just made sense to me.

I was very smart for a long while but alcohol and marijuana tend to make you stupid. For example, now I have no clue how to derive anything (I somewhat remember the fundamentals but if you gave me a piece of paper with any calc problems I wouldn't know head from tails). When I was younger though I was very good at it. I stopped doing mathy stuff after I got to multivariate calculus, so I wasn't doing anything particularly hard here, but I literally wouldn't read the book or study, I would just understand it and get A's.

>us have to bust are ass to get a B
it's called "talent differential", and
you're on the downside of the divide

Yeah no one is going to hire you with a degree in pure math.

Don't pay notice to them, they never amount to anything.

Which is why I'm taking statistics/programming classes on the side. Don't worry, brainlet, I know what I'm doing. Working around the brainlet system is very easy.

Man, I don't know. I am a straight A student, and I feel like I live at the library.

The smartest guy I know is doing a phD in pure math at a top 5 uni for math and I asked him how he did in undergrad. The conversation went like this.

>What was your gpa in undergrad to get into such a good school? Especially since you published a paper and took grad level courses?
>he had told me prior that he took grad classes, and when i googled him, I found he published a small paper in number theory as an undergraduate
>In response to my question, he looks me dead in the eye and says, "Amphetamines."
>w-what
>"I would wake up, take a bunch of adderall, then I would study all day and night, go to class, then I would go home and pass out as soon as I got home. For exams, I would take it the night before, pull an all-nighter, take the exam, then sleep for the rest of the day."
>holy shit
>"I also didn't do anything. I had literally no life, because I was taking 20 units of pure math and writing a paper because I wanted to go to the best school possible."

that conversation was very enlightening. Sometimes, the "geniuses" just are outworking us by orders of magnitude. I once asked a girl who grades HIS homework for his classes in the phD program if she knew him, and her eyes went wide. "Oh. Oh,yes, I know him. He's very, very good."

fuck man. this nigga is like the next paul erdos or something

I have like 6 extra private classes outside school in the past, I always tell me friends I have to get home to play some video games. No one knows I have those classes and I have gotten all As with everyone believing I'm a genius.

Fuck man. I always believed in the fairy tale of alpha males having superior minds that can understand complex mathematical theory by just flipping pages. I guess that shit's like 0.1% probability.

There are a few fields that you just understand and need very little time to study to get A and the rest which you just need to endure by remembering stuff
The more of the first you have the higher your cognitive abilities are, so technically you can carry on iq alone but such people are one in a billion and everyone youve met that claim this are most likely just like to pretend to be really smart

Never use amphetamines (unless you're actually prescribed them). It gets to the point where you can't focus unless you're on them. Your body also builds a tolerance to them, so you need more and more to get the same results.

Why study when you can just learn everything right away? I just read the first three words of each sentence and skip it if it seems unimportant.

Hey fuck you. LET ME TELL YOU YOU FUCKIN BRAINLET. I've never actually studied and I managed to get 3.5 on a 4.0 scale in a Math, you don't ever see me around because I'm always playing video games at home. You can check my steam account, I'm always playing Team Fortress 2, it says right there. Don't ever ask me to play games with you, not because I'm not at the computer but I only play with the best. Next week, I'll be playing counter strike global offensive everyday. When you see me in the library when it shows that I'm playing Dota 2, you should get your fucking eyes checked because you must have seen the wrong person, I WAS NEVER THERE, I WAS PLAYING VIDEO GAMES, BRAINLET.

>needing to read
>not knowing everything just by doing the problem sums
I bet you do the tutorials in video games, learn to learn as you play dumbass.

>implying you can't play a game for 2000 hours without realizing that you can do something which isn't necessary to beat the game that was explained in the tutorial

I usually go in blind and I've been screwed by it, don't test me son

Haha fuck I thought I was in a small class of trolls, didn't know all you guys did the same.

>study like life depends on it in college
>always first one done
>always within the top 5 of the class
>friends ask if I'm studying
>>tell them I'm playing vidya (actually fanatically studying)
>take test
>instructor hands back tests
>"the test average is a 60% ladies and gentleman"
>get test back, 94/100
>friends pissed as fuck
>"user only gets good grades because he has a photographic memory"

Why does this bring us so much damn gratification

This exactly. So many people go to rote memorization because it's easy--they don't have the self control to actually study effectively. For instance, in science and math, you learn by DOING problems--but many don't do this because it makes them feel dumb, and they're afraid to be inadequate. So they waste their time with dumb shit like notecards and solution manuals. If you have good study habits, every year gets easier than the one before it (I feel that way and I have a PhD in physics).

Lol are you autistic? Gauss worked constantly. Just because it wasn't assigned by a prof doesn't mean it's not studying. His life was studying math.

I've been teaching physics at the university level for a while now and I can pretty much guarantee user is full of shit. Unless you go to a liberal arts school or have some professor who's just there as a lecturer, there's almost 0% chance that this happened. I'm sure you just got more wrong than you understood (as is VERY common for intro physics--I have to regrade 10 pre-med kids' exams every year to convince them they really don't get it)

kek

Solution manuals are extremely useful in figuring out how to work chemistry and physics problems I've found. As for notecards what better way is there to memorize large quantities of terms and definitions?

This. I actually lift a finger from time to time.

Because IQ is not real, you fucking racist.

Yeah I don't think that happens.

The smartest people I know spend hours and hours trying to conquer a tough subject. PhD guy took a double course load so he could transfer to a better undergraduate facility (the one I'm at actually)

And took a double course load there to get into his current uni to study pure maths. He admits that it was often hard and that he lost sleep friendships and at times, his health. I think ramanajuan types are 1 in a billion and everyone else just has to bust their ass

(It should be noted that ramanajuan's notebooks had hundreds upon hundreds of pages filled with equations and work he had done. He was not only a genius, he worked insanely hard, often in poverty. "Smart but lazy" is the real meme)

I can't remember his name, but as a party trick, a famous mathematician would study books every night to memorize the passages within them.

Then he would rattle off pages upon pages of the book, claim he only glanced at it, then bask in the praise of everyone thinking he was a genius

Haha, but I take it one step further. I leave my computer on with a single player game while I'm studying at home and give everyone my steam account. I tell everyone that I'm not very good at multiplayer games and that they shouldn't invite me to play with them.

>fuck I wish I was gifted like user
Muh ego. Hnnnnnggg

>regrade
>pre meds
Why

Fuuuugggg. Stop redpilling me. Ahhhhhhh

No way.
>med school without ever revising a week
If that's true, I sure as well won't let you be my doctor.

I was literally that guy up until next year though. Like literally never opened a book while at home and barely ever went to class, still got better grades than everyone else. Especially since I was in a special kind of "uni" (there's no burger equivalent, really) that's supposed to be pretty hard. My IQ isn't even that high (I think it's 142 or something) but everyone thought I was some kind of Will Hunting tier savant. The thing is you have to be interested/invested. I don't ever "study" maths formally at home but whenever I see a proof I feel like I have to understand it, and I think about maths sometimes in my spare time. Most people are just there for the grade, and though they might not be brainlets they're just not invested enough. Last thing, not giving a fuck helps. You're more relaxed during a test and you don't get that paralysis by analysis scenario.

>My IQ isn't even that high
>It's only genius level

regular study, not cramming
Read the book before you go to class. If any material is not clarified in the lecture, then ask questions.
It's really not too difficult

I'm
142 isn't genius level in anyone's book though. The average also isn't 100, most people get like 120-130 apparently.
>in b4 they lie
I really don't think so. Everyone gives those numbers. If they lied, it would mean they documented themselves about the percentiles and adjusted their IQ score so that it would be believable. Normies don't have that kind of autism.
Maybe my IQ is lower, idk. I took one test as a kid and I know there are several tests/scales ie verbal (which I think has something to do with math, surprisingly enough), performance etc.

I sucked at school in high school (2.02 GPA) but I finally got interested and good at school when I had to pay for my own education at community college. I graduate here in 2 weeks and I have a 4.0 with 76 credits done in 2 years. I got through Calc 3 by doing an independent study after Calc 2. I am transferring this Fall on a full ride for having a 4.0, honors, and etc. I have NEVER opened a book for any class except to find quotes and reference material for papers. I don't study, don't do homework, but do attend class regularly but that's because I like my professors and enjoy making friends *ree*

I got only A's in highschool without effort. When the teacher were explaining I just paid attention and tried to figure out the logic behind the lesson. When it had to do with math and science I just tried to find out how someone came up with the formula and the fundamentals of everything. All this was during the class.
Don't forget, kids:
There's no such thing as a stupid question.

> The average is 120-130

...no. No it isn't. That's not how it works.

For some subjects, ideas and lessons come
very naturally so studying wouldn't really help unless I need to brush up on certain ideas
(Theory of Computation/Algo Proofs). However, for
other subjects, I'm very retarded to the point where
only doing a fuck ton of practice problems can I
see the logic and build confidence.

Also liking the subject and not caring about grades
helps with taking down learning barriers

>The average is 120-130

That's the average for the people you hang around.

You should really take an MBTI sometime

Here are two good ones that don't have much room for mis-interpretation:

similarminds.com/big-5-word-pair.html

SLOAN Correlation chart

similarminds.com/global5/g5-jung.html

Auxiliary test:

16personalities.com/

(You can check the middle if you're uncertain)

and here's average IQ score relative to the compatibility chart

It's easy to see how you can think an IQ of 120 is the norm. It's really not. You need to go to your local bar/Wal-mart sometime.

It's likely that the average college graduate/college student is a good deviation above the normal bell-curve.

It makes perfect sense.

For someone so intelligent, you're relatively poor at connecting dots.

I'm going to peg you an INTJ

yeah literally hadn't thought about that t b h. also maybe people who are smarter than average are the ones who take an IQ test in the first place. what are MBTIs for?

It's a personality test.
People strike 1 of 16 if they answer as best they can.

No way man. I'm a valedictorian in a nightmarish feeder school for Harvard and I still had to study to have a 4.0 gpa. Even in here, it was a nightmare because I'm competing with like people that wanting want "cum" on their certificate and want to get into top 10 graduate programmes and worst still pre meds that want to get into places like Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical School.

^guess which one am I

I barely sleep, here, telling friends you don't study doesn't work, it cancels out, he'll tell you the same thing back. So it becomes so that everyone just wears a mask, but actually everyone's dying inside, success is a fucking meme. End my suffering.

intelligence is genetic, and there is nothing you can do about that yet.
life isn't fair, buddy.

Yea talk to me when you get into Stanford cunt.

you do what you're told to do, follow the rules, do it the way they teach you and you'll get straight A's. as easy as that.

People are definitely lying when they say that they don't go to lecture AND don't read the book, as if all the knowledge in the class is magically innate to them. It's one or the other, brainlets. A friend and I never open the book to study, but we went to lectures and sat there, and we did the graded homework. That's still fucking studying.

This thread is pathetic. There are people who understand everything in one lecture and they get the best grades possible and do perfectly the homeworks within 1 hour after the end of the class.

The meme
>I have A's but I study hard for them
is cute but there is a clear gap between the brainlets who works hard and the guy comfortable with any material as soon as it is given to him. THe higher in the education, the higher the gap and the quicker the brainlets will burn out like they should. And these people do not need a drug to be successful.

>This is a good foundation to begin understanding the world as a child
you do not understand the world, at best, you understand the world, like you said, as considered by the lens of quants / engineers

>there are people who understand everything in one lecture
thanks for agreeing with me

A lecture is a study session