When studying Physics problems, even those requiring just Trigonometry for resolving vectors (forces), beware of TOO MUCH honesty about your confusion. Be patient with what appears incomprehensible.
I suspect many suicides, or even those such as myself who took to heavy drinking due to stress caused by challenges presented in studying physics, trigonometry, and life in general, may suffer from a feeling that their brains are constitutionally incapable of understanding the texts, and that, quite possibly, our species is the product of cross-breeding apes with some extraterrestrial life-forms, and that we have inherited more from the ape side of the family than the extraterrestrial side of the family.
I am just an ape trying to understand physics. This is all I will ever be. All those who excel in physics are suspect.
I can't fathom how I pulled A's in Physics I and II at the community college back in 1999. Maybe I am just good at preparing for exams (and was able to program a TI-85 calculator to solve various types of problems). For when I revisit the trigonometry involved in resolving forces (vectors) into components, I once again become saddened by a feeling I must have been intimate with in the high-school (nervous breakdown) phase of my life all those decades ago - which is, the feeling of being an ape-man trying to understand the hard science of the Alien Invaders who have high-jacked our species.
Of course, this paranoia was most likely some kind of protective psychological defense mechanism.
I hate feeling stupid, which is why I study so much, but the more one studies, the more opportunities for feeling clueless one encounters. I want to be able to face these feelings without calling it quits.
For some, calling it quits simply equates to heading to the liquor store for a bottle.
For others, it entails jumping off a tall building or cliff: in India, one student commits suicide every hour.
tick-tock, tick-tock
Beware of this feeling of stupidity that is part and parcel of studying something difficult.
Who would think that the studious suffer such torments?
(I would
)
And yet I may have stumbled on a solution to this suicidal reaction to frustration and confusion. It has to do with developing patience with your own brain. When it stubbornly declares total confusion and despair, maybe this is a sigh to slow it down, to get back to something more basic.
Maybe we each learn in a different manner, and what might take 4 to 8 years for some will take a lifetime for others. We want to end it all, right now. That will solve every imaginable problem in every possible textbook.
What I have discovered is that it is not such a terrible experience to consider that we are not as bright as we thought we were.
Isn't it better to see oneself as "knowing less" than we thought we did than to go on thinking we know more than we actually do?
This whole project of going through "advanced" high school mathematics was to see if I had the courage to face the fact that many of the problems would be more than a little challenging for me.
Holden said this would take courage. It would be far easier to just continue as I was doing a couple years ago, to sit there thinking, "Look at me. I must be brilliant since I am studying Differential Equations, Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Physics," than to dig deeper searching for some fairly challenging old math books and to go through them thoroughly.
Some days I become discouraged, but I am filling in a lot of gaps. There were so many gaps in my knowledge that studying from old math books felt like "post graduate research"!
If I were to be killed suddenly, out of nowhere, one of my last thoughts might be, "None of it even mattered. It was all in vain. Just a Total Mind Fuuck."
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