[Oldlady]

I am about to retake a computer science course. I was thinking about why I did poorly, and I realized - I am worried about infection!

Every course I take... I feel I am not getting the crystal clear Ti standard of understanding I so desire. It feels like I am being pulled through a survey of the material much too quickly. I want to get EVERYTHING TOGETHER before I move forward.

I worry that these university courses will clutter up my mind. I will start memorizing formulas, losing out on the opportunity to DEEPLY learn. I will get a suboptimal understanding of the material and then be passed on to the next course. Over time, the lack of understanding will accumulate until I have no idea what is going on.

I will set lower standards for mastery as a result of pressure from the university I am in, and that will change me.

I don't want to be a half assed collection of useless shit I memorized to pass an exam. I want MASTERY.

Thinking back to high school... I never tried to satisfy my Ti cravings in classes, and I did pretty well in them. I kept my quest for real understanding outside of school, and just did half assed Ti to understand the material enough to pass classes. I don't know if I even remember that material.

Maybe setting high Ti standards in classes is a set up for failure. Maybe if I didn't want to get everything down perfectly, things would be much easier.

[Oldlady]

As an addition, I tried to gain absolute Ti mastery of math in middle school/high school. It just resulted in procrastination, and poor grades.

Can an attempt to apply pure and total Ti to classes in school actually have negative consequences, since this often requires detours and a significantly slowed pace?

[Word Dispenser]

It's possible. I never really looked at it that way before.

I remember becoming frustrated time and time again with math teachers. I never got a math teacher that taught me conceptually. I guess it makes sense. Most people seem to work within the concrete world, and 'real' examples.

It took me much longer to comprehend the material this way, and I wanted to understand the reason behind the mathematics, I wanted to know what it meant and why. I remember wanting so badly to understand. I really gave myself a hard time, because everyone else seemed to have a much easier time with it, and I loved to learn and know what I could know. The worst was being told I just 'wasn't a math person'. I never accepted that, and never will. You can be what you want to be.

By the time I hit high school, and then college, I had so many gaps in my knowledge that I was learning advanced material without a firm grasp of basics that I would have had if it had been taught to me with my learning style in mind.

So now I'm going back on my own, and finding out that it's incredibly easy... Guess what my problem is now? :P

[Oldlady]

I had THE SAME EXPERIENCE WITH MATH.

I was told that I was not a math person because I got bad grades in school.

I also gave myself a bad time, and felt inferior to the people who just seemed to get it.

I will guess that your problem now is that you are too absorbed in math. You spend all your time on it, and you don't put any into other pursuits that you need to.

[Word Dispenser]

I had THE SAME EXPERIENCE WITH MATH.

I was told that I was not a math person because I got bad grades in school.

I also gave myself a bad time, and felt inferior to the people who just seemed to get it.

I will guess that your problem now is that you are too absorbed in math. You spend all your time on it, and you don't put any into other pursuits that you need to.

Nah. I wish.

My problem now is that the basics are too easy and not challenging enough. Even though I need to go through the basics in order to have a solid grasp of the advanced mathematics, it's no easy task to make myself sit down and do it without losing interest and finding something else to do.

I know what I want to achieve. I know what my end goal is. And I know I'll get there eventually. Hopefully.

But, I fear failure.

[Oldlady]

OMG, you are in a bad ENTP pattern.

Just DO something. That's it. Don't force yourself to do something that's too basic. Go to whatever area interests you.

[ClockMan]

I am about to retake a computer science course. I was thinking about why I did poorly, and I realized - I am worried about infection!

Every course I take... I feel I am not getting the crystal clear Ti standard of understanding I so desire. It feels like I am being pulled through a survey of the material much too quickly. I want to get EVERYTHING TOGETHER before I move forward.

I worry that these university courses will clutter up my mind. I will start memorizing formulas, losing out on the opportunity to DEEPLY learn. I will get a suboptimal understanding of the material and then be passed on to the next course. Over time, the lack of understanding will accumulate until I have no idea what is going on.

I will set lower standards for mastery as a result of pressure from the university I am in, and that will change me.

I don't want to be a half assed collection of useless shit I memorized to pass an exam. I want MASTERY.

Thinking back to high school... I never tried to satisfy my Ti cravings in classes, and I did pretty well in them. I kept my quest for real understanding outside of school, and just did half assed Ti to understand the material enough to pass classes. I don't know if I even remember that material.

Maybe setting high Ti standards in classes is a set up for failure. Maybe if I didn't want to get everything down perfectly, things would be much easier.

Glad you posted this. I've been going through the exact same thing....I feel a little less alone.

[Figure]

I think this is the case with all introverted functions - they demand time since they're subjective, and inherently biased to the individual. Because they're directed internally, they don't derive influence from the outside or what is "obvious" on the outside as quickly or clearly as extraverted functions do.

A lot of times Ti seems as though it pulls things together in a strange but valid way to a Te user - I had ENTP calculus professors who would navigate through problems in almost random ways. It seemed like they were totally full of garbage at first, but somehow the problem would work its way through - again.....somehow. It was extremely difficult to use Ni to interpret patterns, because there simply weren't any to notice. Similar to your situation, it took forever to internalize (I-function) the material to a point of coherence.

You'll be fine with it, you probably will end up "getting" it in a way that's actually more efficient than the "memorizers."

[liza_200]

It's possible. I never really looked at it that way before.

I remember becoming frustrated time and time again with math teachers. I never got a math teacher that taught me conceptually. I guess it makes sense. Most people seem to work within the concrete world, and 'real' examples.

It took me much longer to comprehend the material this way, and I wanted to understand the reason behind the mathematics, I wanted to know what it meant and why. I remember wanting so badly to understand. I really gave myself a hard time, because everyone else seemed to have a much easier time with it, and I loved to learn and know what I could know. The worst was being told I just 'wasn't a math person'. I never accepted that, and never will. You can be what you want to be.

By the time I hit high school, and then college, I had so many gaps in my knowledge that I was learning advanced material without a firm grasp of basics that I would have had if it had been taught to me with my learning style in mind.

So now I'm going back on my own, and finding out that it's incredibly easy... Guess what my problem is now? :P

I still experience the same. My ENTP sister is the only one who gives me true answers, and yes..sometimes even google. When I ask something about maths (why this happens etc) I generally get the reply as 'cause it's a rule', even I know it's a rule, but why? No answer.

[Oldlady]

I still remember 9th grade math, when I asked my teacher whether I should take AB calculus before BC calculus.

"Well, the REALLY smart people like Fang, they can skip ahead to BC calculus."

That implied that I was not good at math.

Strangely enough, he said that I was "one of the hardest workers he had ever known" in my yearbook. I think he thought that because I always looked like I was working. I was not, in fact, doing math, but instead tallying my calories and plotting out my eating disorder.

It really grinds my gears when people paint me as an SJ. I was extremely quiet in high school, kept to myself and turned in my work for good grades. I guess it makes sense for them to assume that I was that kind of person?