Hello Anons

Hello Anons,
Can you get excellent grades with a lot of work, even when you arent very gifted?
Im a first semester physics student, and i struggle with math. I have a tested 134 IQ, but it feels like most people here are better at this. Im very hardworking though, is it possible for me to achieve top grades?
No bully please

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archive.is/YO469
calnewport.com/blog/2008/11/14/how-to-ace-calculus-the-art-of-doing-well-in-technical-courses/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

protip: you dont have an IQ of 134 if you struggle with first semester applied mathematics and people are better than you at it because they are cleverer than you are

you are doing something wrong in your approach.
change your study habits because with 134 (legit, not online tested) IQ you should be faring pretty decently without sweating it.

>not very gifted
>IQ 134
If your IQ really was 134 you'd be smart enough to know that this places you in a group containing only 2.2% of the human race making you smarter than 97% of people you meet
But we're on Veeky Forums so that means you're a brainlet until 150+, right?

>2.2% of the human race
>human
>race
triggered

Its legitimately tested.
Its not that i struggle with the theory. I understand everything very easily, but its the problems i struggle with. Its getting better, now that i solve lots of problems, but still, others seem to get there in a more straight forward way.

Yeah, you should. Even if you lack intuition, very few professors test intuition. Every course, no matter how basic or advanced, has a finite amount of content you have to memorize (as always, the main formulas and theorems) and there is also a finite problem pool which can be solved used a finite amount of problem-solving strategies that you may easily memorize by doing a practice problem of each kind.

If you have memorized the main formulas, theorems and strategies then you are already set to be an A student in whatever class you are taking.

>i-i understand it i just cant do it

ur just dumb mate lol

not everyone is good at mathematics

if u even struggle with grade then focus on solving questions that will come out on the test.
if you get good at that first-second year of college then you'll be smart enough to understand and study on your own.
having high iq doesn't mean youll get good grade. retarded kids will get A if they know the material

Ok :( now that an user has to me this i should probably kms

hmm for me it happens that I tend to go for over-complicated approaches (trying to generalize everything from the get-go, without getting intermediate results) and also many teachers told me that I usually gave answers that weren't wrong, but didn't really answer to what was asked.
I fixed these (was not easy tho) and now I'm doing well.

I say that because maybe you do something similar or maybe it can help you to identify your particular problems even if they are unrelated. And yeah pure theory doesn't cut it, also when you are a freshman you really don't know how to study theory; that comes later and let me tell you that reading a proof is not straight forward, you need to spend some time toying with it, making annotations, identifying the structure etc. You get better at it with time but you right now probably just read it one time and say "hm yeah seems reasonable, let's go to the next". I like to think of proofs as the tip of the iceberg, you only see 10% of what there's really in there.

ignore that negative user

having high iq means that your brain has much more analytical processing than your fellow humans. so, the best thing you can do is to stick with it. do your best and your brain will gradually reprograms itself to be more mathematically inclined.

No, i literally have a 134 IQ, WAIS-IV verified.
I don't go to a shit school

Thanks guys. I will follow your advice, indeed, i sometimes get annotated 'too general' or 'not what was asked' in the assignments. Thanks for the encouragement, anons.

>having high iq means that you cry on Veeky Forums about not understanding the most basic of applied mathematics

ftfy

No. Just give up already. You are just 5 points away of being officially a brainlet but you struggle with an easy major like Physics, which means you are not suited for it. Hard work is a meme. You should settle for business or a liberal arts degree. You will be unemployed and it's gonna be your fault but hey, at least you'll know that there is no such thing as effort. You can only be successful if you have an easy time with life.

to be fair, crying on Veeky Forums is a high iq activity.

unironically.

What exactly are you struggling with? I have an IQ of 91 and I got As in the Calc sequence, and in Linear Algebra. (got a B in ODEs) I actually just finished taking PDEs and I'm sure I at least got a B+.
It seems that you have rather poor study habits, then. Do you cram, instead of digesting material over the course of some days? Do you drill with mundane, trivial problems, instead of the more interesting and difficult ones? Do you have a solid foundation of high school Maths?

sure, thats a good point, but usually its about no gf or some other inane shit than simple applied maths problems

>Do you cram, instead of digesting material over the course of some days? Do you drill with mundane, trivial problems, instead of the more interesting and difficult ones?
shouldn't someone with 40+ IQ points higher than yourself have been able to ask himself these very questions much sooner? not to mention answer them....

either OP is a faggot which is true for all x anyway or IQ is perhaps more of a measure of autism than practical ability

yeah 8 hours a day (outside of school) gives you 95+ scores. irrespective of IQ, you will drop off hard in grad school tho, where the geniuses will run laps around you and your 8 hours wont be enough.

>I have an IQ of 91
Jesus fucking Christ. Are you even sentient? When you look in the mirror do you recognize that it is your reflection or do you think there is another human being in front of you?

I usually do better than most students in my classes, and my GPA is hovering around a 3.7, so I'd say "yes" to all those.

I may just be in an easy uni. UCLA btw.

>Veeky Forums in a nutshell

You're lying about your low IQ

No. Granted, there were a good chunk of subtests were I scored around average, but other tests (like processing speed) where I scored ridiculously low. Sorry if it shatters your world views, but even a monkey could do undergrad, given enough studying.
No worries. I don't plan to go to grad school, since IQ actually matters there.

Is your pay tied to your grades?

Ya but "hard work" doesn't mean cutting back to only 2 hours of league of legends a day.

I was "very gifted" then my sophomore year of college as a EE and Physics double major I developed a brain disorder. Had to give up smoking, drinking, gaming, and staying up late to keep up with peers. I am getting A's in first year grad courses but am struggling.

141 reporting in. NO, this is typical. You have an unrealistic expectation of how quickly you should be to work problems at first. The truth is that problems is hard and practice is a must-have.
It's easy to understand theory, follow along with examples, and point out elementary mistakes of others. Not just in science but in life, the world is full of expert theorists in economics, sports, games, you name it. Much rarer are people who can execute, or make a prediction with higher than baseline accuracy from base principles.
The school world is full of students who say "I understand this stuff, I just perform poorly on tests": in reality, they understand the words well enough to follow along when it's explained to them, but they don't understand it well enough to actually apply it.

After working with students for a while I notice that the better-performing students take MORE time to work problems. Because they work the problems much more thoroughly.
>Well, what if it's this way instead of that?
>Is there a way to know if my answer is reasonable?
>Why is this the recommended method?
>Change abstract units into their SI equivalents and to verify that units shake out the way they should
>Verifying results using multiple methods to see if they come out to the same answer
I overheard a student telling someone else he finished his homework in 20 minutes. He wasn't lying. The part he left out is spending a 2 TA-hours session working problems with me.

I'd believe it

Calculus doesn't require much critical thinking it's mostly rote memorization

You might legitimately have test anxiety.

Before Veeky Forums blasts me, before I got on meds, I would make dumb mistakes on exams, fail to think through a problem, and generally freak out during them. I would have studied for 2 to 3 days and scored an 82 or 78 percent, and I was sure that I knew the material. I went to the doc, and I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and I was prescribed some pills.

Now I'm getting straight As. The "bad test-taker" isn't a meme.

Thank you. I guess its just so different from highschool, where i never practised and still got high grades. Thanks for the advice ill follow it. Do you think its advisable to search for a tutor with whom i can do problems, if i have the money for that? Or is that too early?

>C'z GeT DeGrEeS brUh
archive.is/YO469
Of course everyone thinks they'll be the outlier who fucks off for 4 years graduates with a 2.7 but still accrues an expert level of knowledge and blazes their interviews with their alpha god-tier people skills.
There's also some military/defense research groups (like SPAWAR) with starting salary brackets determined by GPA directly.

Not genetics where they ask vague questions and you have to write and essay, wondering what needs to be included. Btw you can be successful at most things with willpower as it is a greater predictor of success than iq. Becoming skilled only requires average intelligence after awhile you won't really even have to think while doing your choosen skill.

>studied for 2 to 3 days
found your problem
you get anxious because you don't know the material
>using pills to score better on tests
the new epidemic

>trying high school at uni
not that I haven't made that same mistake many years ago but still
shit man get your shit together.

I would recommend you carefully read the textbook and work more problems
The struggle of working the problem on your own is what you have to conquer

>tested 134 IQ
Stopped reading there. Less time thinking about your IQ and more time studying. There is no reason you should be on this autistic anime board right now.

Go on libgen.io and get Cal Newport books on how to do school properly calnewport.com/blog/2008/11/14/how-to-ace-calculus-the-art-of-doing-well-in-technical-courses/

Basically the gist is
>understand the intuition
>work 1-2hrs a day on it, full concentration so not sitting with a group of people or watching TV and flipping pages out of your assigned book
>use the TAs for help
>???
>profit

All else fails hire some other student to be your tutor

Yeah, thanks. Tbh tests are in February tho, so i think i pulled myself together early enough.

>negative user
Heh, read that as negative "ion". Haha! I'm such a nerd!

>since IQ actually matters there
Ok, I believe what you said about your IQ

Yep, your IQ, genetics or whatever is what you bring to the table. What you make out of it matters. Work your ass off, also Cal is pretty good >the new epidemic
Definitely agree. I know from several people that their professors advised them to take Adderal for tests. Musicians take beta blockers for better performance and college sportsmen are full of juice

>IQ of 91
That's bull shit.