Also A Funny Thing Is Happening

why is deciding on a title for my thesis so hard

just had a reflection about perfectionism. today I had an exam for which I was prepared very well, but my stupid brain happened and I didn't get the highest grade. my boyfriend was comforting me and he asked since when I want to ace everything, this question made me think

indeed, I don't want to ace everything. I am taking 4 courses this semester, one of which I don't care about enough to strive for the best grade, one of which is way too hard to aim that far, two of which I thought were achievable. and now I didn't achieve that. it feels different to set unrealistic goals and then never achieve them than to set very realistic ones and still fail, that's what I realized today

I am not a perfectionist. I used to be, years ago, and then I learned to set realistic goals. now I'm thinking, isn't perfectionism a kind of a coping mechanism? deep down you know your goals are impossible, so it's not really surprising when you fail. you are never satisfied, sure, but maybe it does feel more safe this way than to not know if you will be satisfied or disappointed. if that's the case then setting realistic goals is absolutely not the way to heal perfectionism

this is kinda cool, I might do one of these when the semester starts

Studying can be a daunting task, especially when we're not feeling motivated or don't know where to start. Luckily you are on Tumblr, where the Tumblr Studyblr community lives!

A group of individuals who share their study tips, techniques, and challenges to help motivate and inspire others.

As a member of this community, I've compiled a master post of study challenges created by Studyblr bloggers. These challenges aim to help students stay on track, improve their focus, and achieve their academic goals. So you can join in and start achieving your academic potential!

>> 𝐍 𝐨 𝐭 𝐞

If you know any other challenges or you've created ones yourself and want to share them, do message me with the link to the post so I can update the list! I too will be creating some, more coding-related ones as I am a coding studyblr (codeblr) blog! That's all and hope you find a challenge you'd like to start!

@tranquilstudy's Studyblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@sub-at-omic-studies' Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@wecandoit’s Study Challenege - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@cheereader's The “Back To College” Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@myhoneststudyblr's The Studyblr Community Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@ddaengstudies' Wabi-Sabi Studyblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@hayley-studies' 30-Day Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@ddaengstudies' Zoomester Studyblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@cheereader's Summer Studying Challenge: Southern Hemisphere Edition - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@cheereader's Horrortober Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@caramelcuppaccino's Autumn Studying Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@myhoneststudyblr's Winter Studying Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@ddaengstudies' Winter Wonderland Studyblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌  

@stu-dna's January Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@planningforpatience's February Study Love Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@littlestudyblrblog’s March Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@smallstudyblrsunite's The June Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@stu-dna’s October Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@alfalfaaarya’s 21-Day Productivity Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@work-before-glory's G's Productivity Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@moltre-se-s' 30 Day Langblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@drunkbloodyqueen’s The language challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@caramelcuppaccino's 20 Language Learning Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@prepolygot’s Langblr Reactivation Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@xiacodes' 5in5weeks Coding Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌  

@friend-crow's Tarot Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌   

I know we all have different skills and all and it's supposed to be complementary, but, people who can do math are so morbidly funny to me

I figure it must be like

Imagine being like only one of twelve people in your whole city who can read and write

And it's not just because everyone else is uneducated, most of them cannot even learn the sort of things you can learn. Or they could, in theory, but it frustrates them so much that they never make it past grade school reading tops, and they hate every second of it

And it's not a "luxury" skill, either, like your whole society needs the written word to function, and by extension, they need you. They need you for shit like reading labels and instruction manuals and writting 2 sentences letters, and they pay you handsomely for that, which is nice, but also feels absurd

You read a whole series of novels that rock your life and you can't even talk about it to your best friend because anything more complex than a picture book breaks their brain

5 IX 2022

maybe once a month is a bit too seldom to post? I kinda want to form a habit of romanticizing my academic life, I see all those studyblr accounts with beautiful photos of their desks and notes and I'm pretty sure those images exist in their minds as well

maybe one day I will be considered studyspo lol

I'm just starting to work on some geometry problems for today, haven't yet decided what I will focus on, but there is this one problem that haunted me when I tried to sleep yestarday:

given a triangle ABC with ∠A = 60°, let P be a point in the interior of ABC such that ∠APB = ∠APC = 120°. prove that ∠APX = 90°, for X being the circumcenter of ABC

it's supposed to be solved using spiral similarity, which is a composition of a rotation and homothety. there was another problem that was listed as "spiral similarity exercise", but I proved it with angle chasing exclusively, creating some nasty drawings in the process

other than geometry I'm studying homology, at the moment the basics of homological algebra, such as the first proofs by diagram chasing and exact sequences

I made some notes for exact sequences induced in homology

my perspective on doing math is slowly changing I think, I feel inspired to search for problems that I would like to solve. I noticed that I have this mental block: before I start doing math for real, I need to learn all the theory. which is absurd, you can never learn all the theory

sure, obtaining truly groundbreaking results requires years of learning theory and mastering tools if you want to specialize in algebraic topology and geometry, but the mindset I have creates the comfort zone of "play safe, just read your textbook, no challenges for now" and I'm starting to see beyond that

right now I'm taking my first steps into understanding that reading textbooks and learning how to solve basic exercises is not enough. they are just methods that are supposed to help my creativity and curiosity do their thing. essentially what I've been doing so far is not math, merely the preparation to do math in the future. no wonder I've been feeling so bored recently, all I'm doing is just learning basic tools. the idealist in me is asking to be unleashed

I feel like I'm about to see something much bigger than me

omg that's the most beautiful thing I've seen today

Chapter 2 of commutative algebra!

25 II 2023

I had an exam yesterday, one more to go. it was the written part, so 12+ hours of solving problems, exhausting just like before. I completed all of them, but of course I am not sure if my solutions are correct, I will find out on monday. I'm proud of the progress I've made

right now I'm studying for the second part, so the theory-oriented one, I can barely focus because I've already learned those things and now I have to relearn them again

I'm trying to prove all the theorems on my own. partly to see how much I remember, partly to see how much I'm willing to improvize. as they say, if you're using too much memory then you're doing something wrong so I'm hoping to be able to come up with the proofs without memorizing anything new

my technique for studying the theory for the exam is to first test myself on how much I remember by trying to write everything down and note where I'm unsure or don't remember at all. then I read the textbooks starting from the worst topics up to the better ones. when I encounter a long complicated proof I am trying to break it down into steps and give each step a "title" or a short description

for instance, the Baer criterion featured in the photo has the following steps:

only do "extenstions on ideals to R→M ⇒ M injective"

define the poset of extenstions of A → M, A ⊆ B and a contrario suppose there is a maximal element ≠B

use the assumption to define an ideal and a submodule that contradicts the maximality of the extension

it is much easier to fill out the details than to remember the whole thing. this is probably the biggest skill I acquired this semester, next to downloading lecture notes pdfs of random professors I find online lmao

a friend suggested that I could make a post about tips for reading math textbooks and papers. as for papers, I don't have enough experience to give any tips, but I can share how I approach reading the books

a big news in my life is that I got a job. I will be a programmer and I start in march. at first I am going to use mostly python, but in the long run they will have me learn java. I'm excited and terrified at the same time, this semester is gonna kill me

the alphabet is like, there's the "a" region (abc...), for just, things, there's the "f" region (fgh..), for functions, there's the "i" region (ijk...), for indices, there's the "n" region (nm...), for integers, and the "p" region (pq...), for integers that are prime, there's the "t" region (tsr...), for time and progression and other axes that aren't the usual ones, and then there's the "u" region (uv...), for like, i guess open sets and differentiable functions and the such i guess, and then finally there's the "x" region (xyzw...) for just, variables that are more variable-y

there's also o and l but you shouldn't use those

29 X 2022

another exhausting week finally over! fortunately I have two extra weekend days, so I can rest and do my homework without stressing over it

I found another promising youtube channel about learning. and "insanely difficult subjects" sounds about right when it comes to everything that's happening in math

I wish there was more content about learning math specifically. the tips I see, however good and useful for studying memory-based stuff such as biology or history, don't seem to work for math

for now my best method is to study the theory from the textbook, trying to prove everything on my own or if that fails, working through the proofs, coming up with examples of objects and asking (possibly dumb) questions that I then try to answer. afterwards I proceed to solving exercises

recently I've been studying mainly commutative algebra, in particular the localization

we didn't spend much time discussing local rings so I had to find some useful properties on my own. the whole idea of "local properties" is an interesting one and I definitely want to read more about it

I find it to be much more elegant to study localization through its universal property and exact sequences rather than through calculation on elements. it's funny how you can cheat so many of our homework problems by knowing basics of category theory and a little bit of homological algebra

I wonder if it's possible to learn math using mind maps, never actually tried. here is my attempt at doing that for one of the subjects in complex analysis:

other than studying I had to prepare a presentation for one of my courses

the topics were given to us by the professor so I thought it would be boring and technical, but I got lucky to discuss the possible generalizations of the Jordan theorem

now I'm gonna talk about something more personal

this week has been difficult because my brain doesn't enjoy existing. some days I had so many meltdowns and shutdowns, I could barely think and speak, let alone study difficult subjects in math. it's really disappointing, as I thought it got better after introducing new medication, but apparently I still can't handle time pressure and I break very easily when emotions become overwhelming (which they frequently do). one of the most discouraging parts of a neurodivergent brain is that you can't always say "alright then I'll just work harder" when you see that the situation requires it. you can't, because your brain has a certain threshold of "how much can you take before you snap" and no tips for studying when you're tired can change that. if you try, you'll just have a meltdown and your day is over, the rest of it must be spent regaining your strength and all you can do is hoping that tomorrow will be better

I wish I could always simply enjoy math and see it as an escape route from a confusing world of human interaction and unpredictable emotions, but whenever there is a deadline or grading criteria, I can hardly enjoy it anymore. I know that this is not what it's always gonna be, the further I go the less deadlines and exams we have, so I must wait and one day it might be okey

since june I've been trying to discuss accommodations regarding adhd and autism with my university but the process takes forever and I'm slowly losing hope that I will ever have it easier

nonetheless, I'm willing to do everything to achieve the goal of spending my days alone working on developing some new theory. just a few more years and I might start living the dream