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How do you deal with study burnout?

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 15:39:16 2022 No.14078529 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>14078654 >>14078670 >>14078674 >>14078963 >>14080262

I'm a third year physics student, supposed to be finishing my bachelor's this year. Spent most of my studies so far sat on my ass at home because of the 'rona. Got back to school this semester but somehow it was even more draining, since none of the profesors I've had seemed to give a damn about actually teaching, gave us just the bare minimum and expected everything in return. Feel kinda fed up with it, forcing myself to actually study feels harded than ever, I feel zero passion in all I do and with the exam period starting tommorow I just don't know how to continue. I used to love solving problems, reading up on stuff, discussing it with peers, found it all so fascinating how it all just WORKS but now I just feel apathy. Any advice?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 16:15:29 No.14078654 Report

Quoted By: >>14078963

>>14078529
Suck it up. Unironically.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 16:21:18 No.14078670 Report

Quoted By:

>>14078529
Deal with it like everyone else or try drugs

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 16:22:29 No.14078674 Report

Quoted By: >>14078687

>>14078529
What do you think university actually is? No one is forcing you to be there, you go there to self study and the tuition you pay is for the opportunity to sit the exam. Forced lectures in every module are a new thing. You should never rely on Professors to teach you anything.

What I would recommend is to study outside of the syllabus. You are nearly done, you can power through the exams (never used it myself, but take the meds and force yourself to study if you have to). Limit your screen time to 2 hours a day max.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 16:26:53 No.14078687 Report

Quoted By: >>14078690 >>14078701 >>14078995

>>14078674
> the tuition you pay is for the opportunity to sit the exam.
thats the biggest scam. they should teach you the way they teach on youtube where everyone leaves comments like "if only my professors were that good". why is that? every single online professor is great. but every single irl professor doesn't give a shit and only gives you bare minimum.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 16:28:31 No.14078690 Report

Quoted By:

>>14078687
>Every single irl professor doesn't give a shit and only gives you bare minimum
That is not my experience. Maybe you just go to a shitty university

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 16:31:17 No.14078701 Report

Quoted By:

>>14078687
Usually most departments have a few good teaching Profs, but the people you see on YouTube are often shoddy researchers and not real Profs. Most younger Professors especially are forced to focus on their researchers, only the older faculty have time to prepare high quality lectures.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 17:47:15 No.14078963 Report

Quoted By:

>>14078529
Lmao, pace yourself on the directionless existentialism, you'll be encountering that way more often throughout your life. Just do what >>14078654 said and suck it up, you'll get through it, especially if you are truly passionate.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 17:56:19 No.14078995 Report

Quoted By: >>14079033 >>14079058

>>14078687
Because the western university system is pretty fucking bad. It's organized highly inefficiently and everyone lives with it because true restructuring will never happen (the bureaucracy resists it).

There have been many studies that full-time lecturers (i.e., not even professors) are normally much more effective than the system we have now (even for upper-level undergrad courses). These lecturers are effective without even PhDs (most of this class only have masters in the field). The problem is, the system actively pushes against this. PhDs have huge overinflated egos and will actively sabotage these lecturers, especially if they teach better than them at the higher level courses.

To be honest, even graduate courses really don't require the expertise of professors generally, just a fresh PhD is enough for them.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 18:08:11 No.14079033 Report

Quoted By: >>14079156

>>14078995
i think it is just survival of the fittest. think about it, what would be their motivation to teach better? a "good school" doesnt mean they teach better. they try to weed out the weakest students as early as possible. the science and the industries don't need large numbers of mediocre graduates. the food chain balances itself. contrast this with youtube. the teachers there do it for fun so they take pride in hand holding and making sure every midwit "gets it". totally different perspectives.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 18:14:12 No.14079058 Report

Quoted By: >>14079156

>>14078995
Western education is the best system in human history by every metric. The problem is younger generations of mass education peasants who interpret "higher learning" as "extended highschool". You are there to learn a HIGHER level of knowledge, that means getting deep into a topic specialised by your professors and more ideally doing some research work for him. This is the only way to make real progress in your education beyond what you could easily from textbooks. The system was never designed for stragglers to catch up all the material they should've self studied in highschool. Pure lecturers are a modern cancer that do not belong at university, they should be teaching after hours advanced highschool classes.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 18:43:58 No.14079156 Report

Quoted By: >>14079193 >>14079376

>>14079058
See, the institution comes out to defend it's inadequacies. The truth is, professors shouldn't be teaching for the most part. Apprenticeships (which we effectively have at the PhD schooling level) are fine, but professors are not teachers.

Also, note that I also am firmly of the opinion that these full time lecturers are also more effective at the upper level courses. Typically people have a passion for education or for research and not both. Most become professors due to long careers in research.

Just because it is arbitrarily the 'best' it's ever been does not mean it is good.

>>14079033
Nah, not even, most of the good schools are only good for connections. Ivy leagues are notoriously easy, but it looks really good on a rich kids resume if they have a high gpa from Harvard (and the connections that comes with).

Undergraduate programs really don't have any prestige. This is also why it should be taken over by lecturers trained in teaching the content. At the undergrad (and even starting to spread to the grad level) the course structure from institution to institution is essentially the same. There's not really any specialized undergrad degrees for the most part. Getting a math degree at bumbfuck college is essentially the same as the math degree at Harvard. The only difference is the connections and weight the names hold (which is the only value undergrad has)

Anyway, the goal of modern upper western education isn't about weeding kids out or even focused into getting the best researchers or scientists. It's just a glorified long-term IQ and submission test. Like you don't generally actually start breaking into interesting until graduate courses at least.

I don't see this changing anytime soon, so I think the system should just morph to fully adopt the degree mill status. I also believe the majority of institutions should close down since they are mostly milking undergrads for same universal education, but that's something else.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 18:52:34 No.14079193 Report

Quoted By: >>14079274

>>14079156
>most of the good schools are only good for connections
Depends on the definition of "good". Prestigious (aka good for connections) vs good for actually training good scientists or engineers. Most private schools are the former group. But there are really good public schools where the tuition is really low (for the in state students), but the graduates are really strong in their fields.

>Ivy leagues are notoriously easy
Sure, just like most private schools, because of their business model: high tuition costs => lots of hand holding. They want your business.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 19:09:44 No.14079274 Report

Quoted By: >>14079395 >>14079421

>>14079193
No, no I mean, literally, at the undergrad level, all the programs are effectively the same. I work at a job where we have recently had a surge of hiring (federal work so they hire lots of people at bursts). Lots of people with just their undergrads. Some from highly prestigious institutions, some from bumbfuck state schools, some from liberal arts, etc. I honestly can not discernably pick out a difference in any of their skill levels that would have come from their education. When I talk about the courses they had, they all effectively had the same education (assuming they went for the same degrees).

I know there are differences at the graduate level, since I left a shitty grad program for my current job and started a new grad program in my free time recently, but for undergrad I just don't see it. If anything, all the programs have become more or less the same.

An undergrad in physics learns takes the same set of courses with the same textbooks across all the programs and all the states. All the institutions mostly require the same extra courses. Honestly, the only thing I've been able to pick out as far as structure goes is some programs are more effective at incorporating programming and some have a required thesis. Other than that, it's all the same.

I've heard that certain programs, like civil engineering and environmental science, will be pretty different based on schools because they typically have coursework tailored to the demands of the area, but those are exceptions (like if you're in Florida you want focus much at all on snow in your civil engineering program, but that's a bigger deal in New York).

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 19:36:47 No.14079376 Report

Quoted By: >>14079479

>>14079156
>The truth is, professors shouldn't be teaching for the most part. Apprenticeships (which we effectively have at the PhD schooling level) are fine,
Yes, I'm glad we can we agree on that. Now you also just have to note the current bachelor degree is a scam full of material that should be taught in highschool. And lower IQs should be taught a trade instead of being pushed into the slow intellectual death pits that highschool has become.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 19:42:12 No.14079395 Report

Quoted By: >>14079479

>>14079274
OK, this is an interesting perspective. I also had a thought that perhaps some of the better candidates are not good because they went to a good school but rather because they chose a good school according to their ambitions but the school didn't really make any difference. But sounds like based on your experience interviewing people, everyone is more or less the same?

Considering the same textbooks, you may be right, but I also know that some programs that use the same textbooks may be objectively harder since the profs can pick harder problems (you know, those at the end of the problem list after each chapter, the first few are a breeze and then they get progressively harder and those are sometimes included in the quizzes), and labs could be harder. For example, as an EE, I know that linear algebra can be taught on many different levels and some textbooks were subjectively harder for me than others.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 19:47:14 No.14079421 Report

Quoted By: >>14079479

>>14079274
For engineering it has to be the same because of accreditation requirements. It's actually the most prestigious schools that skip out on them because the engineering institutes wouldn't dare think about taking their accreditation away. To give an explicit example, at MIT you can skip core engineering courses that are required almost everywhere else. This is justified by saying students take more than the minimum anyway. Usually though they skip them and get a head start on advanced postgrad level modules. It's rare, but the only engineers I've met with huge knowledge gaps were from top tier schools. I always ask for their full transcripts before hiring now.

I trust shitty state schools to always teach a certain minimum though.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 20:01:10 No.14079479 Report

Quoted By:

>>14079376
I don't disagree. But it's futile. I think the system won't be overhauled in that direction and needlessly fighting it is worthless.

This is the direction the system wants to go, so we might as well make it as clean and efficient as possible.

>>14079395
Right, you would assume that better students with higher drive would go to better schools, but it seems like drive is something developed for a lot of people. Our only educational higher requirement for these undergrad positions is a 3.5 gpa. It seems like regardless of school, if you hit that gpa you have effectively the same education. There may be more differences in the mid range, but the high range seems to be effectively the same students.

I think there are variations based on professors, but because teaching isn't much of a factor when hiring a professor (normally it's the research that matters) it all comes out as a wash. Like prestigious professors might be an easy A in even 'hard' courses. I know this was true with the head of physics at my undergrad. His classes were easy as fuck where as the youngest faculty member had the hardest and most rewarding courses.

>>14079421
I've looked at many undergrad courses since noticing this trend. And for physics and math it all seems the same across the board in terms of curriculum.

All physics undergrads seem to have the same structure of:
2 classical mechanics courses
2 Quantum Theory courses
2 E&M courses
Then a menagerie of electives which always include relativity, optics, and nuclear physics.

Math is the exact same across the board with almost identical structures and required courses. Even all the sequence options are the same (I.e., PDE sequence, statistics sequence, and abstract algebra sequence).

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 09 Jan 2022 23:22:46 No.14080262 Report

Quoted By:

>>14078529
Steel your Volition and keep walking.
It doesn't get better but you'll get more resilient.

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