academic whiplash

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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onto today’s topic: academic whiplash 😬 

i grossly underestimated how much academic content i’d forget while on my gap year. i suppose everything, even the greatest decisions of my life, still have their own set of minuscule cons.

math has been especially strange. it has always been my favourite subject in school: i learned the material from grades ahead of me, participated in competitions (by choice …), and would dive into the challenging questions without hesitation. i have my mom to thank for nurturing that interest — she’s a math nerd herself. 😋 

not doing advanced math for a year definitely impacts progress, and i’m realizing that now. but, it’s nothing i can’t bounce back from.

i’m taking calc 2 right now, and i was absolutely bewildered during my first week of classes. my other classes have been pretty straightforward (and fun!).

i literally forgot everything.

that creeping fear of seeming like an idiot started to meld into dread for the class, and i was feeling really frustrated that all of my interpersonal growth from the year was crumbling at the face of a hard course.

wake up! 🔈️ it’s just numbers. there were 2 things i needed to fix:

1) tangibly: if you’re feeling unfamiliar with the content, then familiarize yourself. simple.

2) more intangibly: remind yourself that everyone has their own circumstance and nothing here is a race.

a weekend of reiterating that to myself, and 4 hours on zoom with my mom so she could re-teach me everything did the trick. 😁 

i enjoyed calc 2 today — it felt like i was back in a groove again, but minus the impending academic pressure to succeed that always lingered while i was in high school. learning is fun, and i really feel that way now that i’ve moved past the academic whiplash.

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