Slytherin in Becoming

23 l Work and Play l Scrapbook for the 20s | Studyblr | Life Notes @ https://substack.com/@saanjh3?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2gic32

[slythdiaries]

Almost an year's break

A lot happened in life. Routines changed, habits fell out of place, said goodbyes to some places, some people and will move forward to some new ones.

Cheers to my upcoming journey🥂

[9ballsack]

No one talks about the resilience you have to have to continue to study even when you know you’re going to fail or nothing is sticking.

#sighhhhhhh

[algebraic-dumbass]

"wow ur so good at math" ah ha but you see. you dont ever get good at math. you stay bad, but now youre bad at harder math

[physicallyimprobable]

Okay so I have two points about this which are largely unrelated but I think both are important.

Point the First: This is true of almost every skill that you can acquire. You don't ever get good at cooking, you just get bad at more technical dishes. You never get good at guitar, you just get bad at more intricate songs. You never get good at art, you just get bad at more ambitious pieces. The nature of improving is such that in order to grow past your limit you must first be at your limit. This is called the intermediate value theorem. To improve is to struggle, and that is as true of math as it is of anything else.

Point the Second: My first point basically just says "this happens to everyone" which, while true, is not the most comforting message. When I'm actually experiencing these feelings, what makes me feel better is a certain metaphor that I do think applies uniquely well to mathematics:

Learning mathematics is climbing a mountain which is vertical in front of you and horizontal behind you.

Now, for the actual proper metaphor I need more setup (and I could talk at length about why I love this as a metaphor not only for learning math but more importantly for teaching it) but the basic idea is what's in the sentence. In mathematics, even more so than in other subjects, the stuff you learned last year seems trivial and the stuff you're learning this year seems impossible.

This is of course hyperbole, but it's a very real effect which has lead some of the most brilliant mathematicians I know to devalue and degrade their own skills. "I've only learned the easy stuff," they moan, "the hard stuff is beyond me!" Like no, girl, you're just assuming that the topography you see is actually what's there.

Keeping this metaphor in mind is what really makes me feel better about struggling in math, both in that it justifies the "now I'm bad at harder math" feeling (Of course I am! The mountain is so steep here! But I've climbed it before and can do it again!) and the "everything I've learned is trivial" feeling (Of course it is! The mountain is flat there, as a direct result of my efforts! This is something to be proud of!)

I'll cut this off here, but I'll leave you with some encouragement: Keep being bad at hard math. No one ever said flattening a mountain would be easy.

[slythdiaries]

23.03.25

Come study with Mr. Cutu.

Girl breakfast and geometry notes.

Honestly, today was such a lazy day I don't know if it's the summer afternoon slump, or my procrastination because of geometry, or workplace stress or general anxiety 😣😣

I just hope I'll soon be able to turn off everything else and get my intensity back.

[slythdiaries]

18.03.25

Building up the momentum.

Happy with last weekend. I was able to clock in 14 hours of studying and brushed up on the topics I was having trouble with.

Also, I've been trying to wean myself off of caffeine lately. I'm a huge coffee lover but it for sure gives me jitters. Let's see how my addict self copes up with this.

[slythdiaries]

17.02.25

Somebody save me from my mocha addiction😫

I'd totally wake up if Monday skies looked like this. (Trust me, it looked better. My phone camera has vision issues😔).

[slythdiaries]

02.02.25

This week felt cozy. Tried hot chocolate from Costa and it was BAMN😍

Math + Music = Zoned in. I love Park Hwa Yobi!!

[slythdiaries]

24.01.25

That warm golden glow of bakery in January.

Winters just beginning to give way to spring.

[slythdiaries]

12.01.25

Back to the grind again. [mandarin version🍊]

Weekends are so lazy lately, I'm real guilty of waking up late and studying in bed 😣

If someone knows a solution to winter induced procrastination, please help 😩

[algebraic-dumbass]

Math is close to magic. We cast spells (theorems) to defeat our foes (math problems). I cast Fermat's little theorem. I cast Mayer-Vietoris Long Exact Sequence. But the most powerful spell of all, the Ol' reliable, everyone's favorite cantrip if you will, remains Looking At Blackboard Thinking Really Hard And Cussing A Lot.

[str-ngeloop]

one critical piece of advice is that opportunities are fractal doorways

you can take an opportunity that seems small, a group meeting for an hour once a week let's say, and if you really commit and put a lot of effort into even a small opportunity, if you work to prop open that passageway, then you will find that it can surprisingly quickly multiply into many future possibilities, many future paths.

one of the members of your small book club desperately needs a babysitter for the weekend. that's a gig. another one hits it off with you on some obscure topic. the bulletin board at the place you meet has a flyer for a class on writing. you go, and now you're in an environment full of other people who are there for the same reasons. talk to them. over drinks one night an older member encourages you to apply for uni with one of your short stories you wrote for the class. et cetera.

I spent a lot of time paralyzed with indecision, trying to find just the right opportunity to get me where i wanted to go. that's the entirely wrong way to go about it. practice pursuing possibilities is more important than optimizing your choice of path, waiting for just the perfect opportunity to magically drop into your lap. It likely won't happen like that, it's not necessary, and you don't need to live your whole life at once. Frodo didn't arrive at Mt Doom by making the optimal choice on the first crossroads out of the shire.

Instead cultivate an attitude of engagement with whatever imperfect seemingly insignificant opportunities that are already in front of you, and keep an open mind & eyes, and trust in the fractal nature of reality. look for threads to pull, opportunities to pursue, and engage with people as if every one of them has something new to teach you, and somewhere new to take you that you've never been. they probably do. the more you engage the more you'll find out that this is true; trust that paths will lead to more paths even if you can't see them yet. trust that the big scary void question mark of a future contains not only unseen dangers but also an unseen unfurling infinity of options and paths, friends and lovers, work and play. i love u

[slythdiaries]

04.01.25

First post of 2025 at 2:47 am. Yay

An ode to the playlist that stood by me in 2024 when no one else did

[slythdiaries]

21.12.24

Part - 2

This gorgeous strawberry dessert 🤌. I went back to re-reading some of my favorite passages from the books I loved. This one is from ‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage’.

Thanks to my secret Santa for the gift. This is my first ever Christmas gift by the way🥹🥹

Merry upcoming Christmas y'all 🫶🪩🎄

[slythdiaries]

17.12.24

And here comes December.

This year was rich. A lot of unexpected things happened and I grew as a person.

Though, the last two months were tumultuous leading up to my long depressive episode for this year. It's mid-december and I think I'm nursing myself back to normalcy.

However, even in these two months life kept on moving and whenever I could, I did capture some moments here and there.

Will dump them here in 2 parts. After all, the diary must resume its story.

The long sore-throat season and hot ramen. Would rate the ramen 6.5/10

This coffee is so not like coffee yet retains something coffeesque (no, that's not a real word). It's good though.

Kept pushing myself to study, but I seem to have lost that previous intensity for now. I miss that.

[iwillsurvivecollege]

Finding the value of your sins by using trigonometry.

[slythdiaries]

13.10.24

Hot chocolate season upcoming☕

And this ambient music is so good I can't. Samarkand 1869. Highlight of my October.

[slythdiaries]

25.09.24

After n number of meetings, and sunday nights at the office even, my project has finally ended and it was glorious. Took a day off today, things are suddenly so quiet, it feels like I've come out on the other end.

Though of course, like everything. This too will pass.

In the meantime, I've been trying to at least keep up the habit of studying.

But I've realised that endurance is overrated. It can push you through the last mile but ultimately it all comes down to whether you find intrinsic joy in what you do.

At this point I'm happy to simply get into my zone and focus on things I enjoy. That's all that matters I guess.