<p>Yeah, the same thing happened to me when I took a year off from school. So now I just don’t study. But when I get back to school I’ll want to study because</p>
<p>a) Math is awesome and beautiful when you actually understand it and bores me to tears when I don’t, so I might as well actually study so I can get something out of my classes. It’s a really painful experience, being able to understand a subject just enough that you know it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever studied, but knowing most of it is beyond you because you’re depressed and don’t feel like working anymore.</p>
<p>b) Back in middle school I used to do a lot of math and not understand it and it was the worst thing ever, I was memorizing formulas and blindly guessing and stabbing in the dark. And understanding things is a lot more fun. I never want to go back to not understanding again. You feel powerless, like someone replaced your legs with metal rods and you can’t walk.</p>
<p>c) If I don’t learn stuff well now, I won’t even have that choice later because the stuff you learn in freshman year is fundamental and everything else builds on it. My sister failed out of grad school because she didn’t learn her high school stuff well. I’ll never forget the three-hour phone conversations she had with our dad begging him to help her with homework neither of them could do, but at least my dad knew the chain rule so he was better off than she was</p>
<p>d) Well at Caltech everyone else studies, so it’s kind of a perverted sort of peer pressure. Being incompetent is like being worthless.</p>
<p>e) I need a 3.5 gpa to not lose my scholarship</p>
<p>Academics may not be the purpose of human life, but I figure if I enjoy them and I’m good at them I might as well not let myself go.</p>