/sci/ - Science & Math

I'm 26, have only a high school diploma and a desire to go to college to my name. I've been tested at a 125 IQ.

Realistically, what are my career prospects looking like? What's my professional ceiling?

>>8766101
I was several years ahead in mathematics in high school, although I didn't study efficienty (didn't have good textbooks, just random webpages). I have always procrastinated extremely much on everything that I had to do. This didn't include math, because I knew everything already. When I went to university, my enjoyment of mathematics was replaced with anxiety, so I went from doing just math to doing nothing at all. I could enjoy other things, such as learning a language. But then I started to derive my sense of self-worth from that, and there was the pressure again, and it caused me to lose interest in the language. It went like this with everything, until everything generated anxiety, even video games.

Being in a depressed state for a while makes one really cynical. Everyone knows how irrelevant e.g. the Riemann Hypothesis is to human progress. But human progress itself is very abstract. I care about myself and a few people close to me, but not humanity in general. "Progress" is mostly a meme that exists because there are people who make a living perpetuating it. etc.

But if you get cynical enough and succeed in losing hope completely, then there's no pressure anymore. So I did rediscover math. My energy is limited, so I only study a few hours per day, but that's the way it has always been. I could go back to university, but it's not organized in a way that's helpful to me. I could do my other hobbies as well now, but I like math the most. Because math is mostly collaborative these days, it's unlikely I will contribute anything meaningful to it, except maybe writing expository material. I don't have any will power, but doing math makes me feel better than watching YouTube.

Instead of being regretful when you're 70, you can be anxious about "being regretful when you're 70" now. By the time you're 70, you may not even have good memory. I read that people on their death bed often regret having been too ambitious and not social enough (idk if that's true).

Why is math so hard?


Should a person with a two digit IQ even bother trying to learn math?