the one about getting comfortable being smart again and self-education

i'm in my academic era

Substack has been important for me for a lot of different reasons, but the most important one is that it reminded me how much I enjoy being an intellectual. I know this may sound pretentious, but with the popularity of this essay about bringing pretension back, and this post about self-education I thought it might be the time for me to talk about it. 

I’m smart and I always defined myself as being smart during my childhood, until… I wasn’t. The truth is that I have a learning disability called dyscalculia, which makes my brain struggle to process numbers. It was hard because as soon as I started to learn about numbers (yes, in pre-school), I began to struggle, and in the early 2000’s no one knew that it was a learning disability, which made people label me as a dumb kid. It didn’t matter that I got straight A’s in all the humanities, and it didn’t matter that all my essays showed how my writing and vocabulary were advanced compared to the kids in my class, I was the one to be pitied because I couldn’t do math. Because I was told this repeatedly by teachers, my parents, and tutors, I started believing that I truly was stupid. All because I couldn’t do math. Isn’t that so… small? Compared to everything else I could do? 

Even though no one believed in me, I had a great thirst for knowledge. I wanted to know everything about everything during my teenage years, but of course, outside of school because my hours there were the worst part of my day. So I began my path to teach myself everything I wanted. Cinema, poetry, literature, philosophy. Everything that sparked that flame in me. And it was incredible! I learned so much during those years… From Freud to Proust, I was a reading machine. 

As I was getting older, I kept failing in school just because I couldn’t do numbers, and my parents blamed everything on me. It came to the point that I became so full of rage that I stopped caring about school altogether. I started failing even in the subjects I was good at because I didn’t bother to study anymore. What was the point? I was going to fail anyway because of the STEM subjects. I started hating school, hating learning, hating anything to do with it. It traumatized me to the point in which I was so terrified of failing that I stopped trying to learn anything at all. Surprisingly, I did the version of the SAT in my country without studying, and not only did I get a grade high enough to graduate high school, but I got an A in my essay. I was 18 at the time, and instead of feeling smart, I felt lucky. 

The years ahead were troubled. My father pressured me into doing a degree I didn’t want to, and instead of resisting, I went ahead just for him to stop upsetting me about it. I eventually dropped out. During that time, I was completely lost and didn’t know what to do with my life, and I still didn’t think of myself as someone smart. Eventually, I got into a depression that made me unable to stick with anything since I wasn’t emotionally stable, which led us back to the present. 

After recovering from said depression, I made this Substack and realized that yes, I am smart. I’m writing essay after essay in a language that isn’t even my native and that I taught myself during the most traumatic years of my life. How isn’t that amazing? And yes, many people are smarter than me, but the opposite is also true. There are so many stupid people in this world, and I know I’m not one of them. Now I know that being able to do math isn’t proof of intellect. There are so many people with college degrees who say they don’t believe in science anymore, or who post conspirational theories online. Why I was told I was dumb my entire life, while they were told they were smart?

This epiphany inspired me to pursue an education in my way. Yes, in 2025 I’ll be in my academic era, but I won’t attend any particular school. What I realized is that a formal education doesn’t work for me. A classroom with a professor explaining the subject doesn’t inspire me, it bores me. And I think that is true for a lot of people as well, especially for neurodivergent people. Believe me, Einstein isn’t the only neurodivergent who hates the educational system. 

I plan to take Yale open courses in History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Classics, English, and more. I will also use Harvard's free courses, EDX, and Coursera’s course syllabus to guide my studies. I’m using these courses more for their syllabus, references, etc. However, for some subjects, I think it’s wise to watch the lectures, such as courses on specific authors where the professor discusses one book in each lecture (I’m watching it for the course of American Studies: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner). But it’s not worth it for all of them. To be more precise, I plan on studying English, History with a focus on The Middle Ages, Philosophy, Sociology, Classics (I’m already starting to learn Latin), a bit of basic Psychology, and Cinema and Media studies. 

Besides Psychology, all of this is a hobby of mine, so I’ll devote years to finishing it, and maybe then I’ll try to get a degree*, but as this is not my job I’ll devote my free time to it: I have scheduled my nights and weekends for studying so far, and that will do for now. At least 1 hour per day, but the goal is 2 hours. 

I’m very excited about this because I’m feeling like I used to as a teenager. Learning doesn’t feel scary anymore, it feels like something I can and want to do. I’m already predicting that I’ll get a lot of obsessions about new topics in the future, so buckle down because we’ll have a lot to talk about! I can’t wait to be a reading machine again. This is what I like the most about myself: To be passionate about things. And yes, it was nice to obsess over shows and celebrities for the time I was on bed rest, but I’m so over that! Books and learning are what always made my life worth living.

What are you passionate about? What are your learning and academic goals for this year? Tell me in the comments! And please, never, ever call yourself dumb. Not even in a joking manner. <3

*for some degrees you can choose to study on your own and then take a test to get it!