How to cope with the fact that I will never become a great

Do something you love/are good at and become great.

Drugs

>>8914017
Thanks for reminder.

Why do you give a shit about what other people think of you? You only want to be "great" because you want other people's validation.

Stop giving a shit about people and just do it for fun. You'll never be at the top but you can still have fun just doing work at your own level.

Look, pretty much nobody becomes great. 99.9999% of people are mediocre nobodies. It is not really within your power to become great (I know American will cringe at this but it's true). Most people fail at life by their own standards. Most people give up on their dreams because they aren't attainable.

But you can still have fun and do something productive.

I realised this when I started getting serious with chess. I knew I would never be a great chess player no matter how much I loved the game. But I still have fun playing.

I won't be a great mathematician either. But you know what? Who gives a shit. I will get my Ph.D, and then find work at some backwoods university and have a pretty chill live nonetheless.

Most of my professors aren't great either. Nobody knows who they are and there will never be a Wikipedia page about them but they still have a nice life.

>>8914031
This. Finally some good advice on this fucking board.

>>8914016
Nothing else really matters

>>8914031
What if you're to stupid to even get a degree in what you love?

>>8914031
Except it's not for validation purposes. It's more for doing something meaningful, for contributing to the progress of humankind. A small-time mathemtaician can't really contribute anything.

>>8914041
>Progress of humankind
You should've become an engineer.

>>8914045
Maths also contributes to the progress, just in an indirect way.

>>8914052
A shitty engineer can produce more value than a shitty mathematician

An hero.

>>8914057
But a great mathematitian can produce more value than a great engeneer.

>>8914057
But how valuable is that value? Not very. It still holds so little meaning as to be totally meaningless. It's like saying a store clerk contributes to the progress of humankind by providing a great mathematician with the goods he wants or needs. Meh

File: qlWCn4eCm1jX2E0JEqfMrFK4V_J4XI07P5MaEMf67DI.png (74KB, 320x248px) Image search: [Google]

74KB, 320x248px

>>8914007
memorize all the vocabulary words for the GRE

Find something you find fun or if you can't >>8914058 seem to be the only two options

>>8914007
You can OP, just keep trying

>>8914020
You too

Feynman was a brainlet

>>8914060
But you're not a great mathematician :^)

>>8914041

Don't fall for the "only major breakthroughs are a contribution" meme. Small time mathematicians tease out fine details and carry on the tradition. There aren't enough Abels or Gausses born to do that by themselves.

>>8914016
This

>>8914007

You don't, you keep working hard and believe you will. Life is not about getting your goals, but about having them. Having a reason to wake up every morning is more valuable than ever achieving your dreams.


Never look for a way to cope if it means leaving your dreams behind, it won't work. Goals creates positive emotion, you cannot live sane without them.

easy, just become a physicist instead :^)

>>8914098
The ant hill idea of progress.

I don't know about math, but as far as I can tell, science at least, has become too vast for a single person to make a significant contribution any longer. What's troubling though is that the stamp-collecting variety of science, at least, is poised to be automated away. So not only will individual small time scientists contribute very little, their work might not even be needed. This is what STEM will have to contend with in the not too distant future.

>>8914135
Soundest advice I have seen in these threads.

It sounds sappy, but people need hope to live.

>>8914195
Aren't most STEM jobs in service and design/manufacturing?

>>8914209
I wasn't really talking about employment. More about the pace of scientific discovery.

>>8914135
it's about the journey, not the destination

>>8914135
Understand man is not a machine
He needs a service and a purpose and a reason for being

>>8914135
tfw no goals

>>8914041
>A small-time mathemtaician can't really contribute anything.

Yes you can. You might not solve P \neq NP but you can discover a new numerical method that solves a certain type of sparse matrices much faster than current methods. Then some senior engineer will be cursing your name when they couldn't get their stupid MATLAB code to return the correct upper bound.

>>8914098
>Small time mathematicians tease out fine details and carry on the tradition.

Also the great mathematicians build on the work of others. They are educated and guided by those others and even their work is probably built on the work of lesser mathematicians.

>>8914135
>Having a reason to wake up every morning is more valuable than ever achieving your dreams.

This is true. I am depressed and miserable but having a goal gives my life structure. I know I can go down that rabbit hole of utter desperation if I don't focus on my work.

>>8914038
You don't need a degree to do what you love... Join the ham radio guys if radio waves are your thing. No need to become a physicist.
Easier with maths since it is a solitary thing.

>>8914061
They're saying you rely on people recognition because you expect there is "good enough value" to seem valuable. Except if you add ten years, 100 years or 1000 years to your created value, it evaporates. At any case, you will be forgotten.
That's why the store clerk is almost as valuable as Einstein. Maybe not on a 10 or 100 years scale, but give it a little time, and dust is just dust.

>>8914813
>Everything evaporates
This. This absurdist stuff right here is what I refuse to ever believe. I need to believe we do things for a reason and it will not be in vain. And it's the reason why it's NOT about recognition.

>>8914007

Consider that you'll never be a great artist, musician, writer, philosopher, scientist, surgeon, or car mechanic either.

In other words, perspective.

>>8915445
Has there ever been a person who became great at all of those things?

Think of it this way even if you became Terry Tao or Michozuki still hardly anybody would know you. Just do math because you like doing it, it's that simple.

>>8914063
GRE verbal is the easiest shit. No need to memorize anything.

>>8915451
Da Vinci? Except for car mechanic.

>>8914031
>>
>I won't be a great mathematician either. But you know what? Who gives a shit. I will get my Ph.D, and then find work at some backwoods university and have a pretty chill live nonetheless.
this
hedonists just want to have fun, like women chasing their harmless fun

>>8915418
No one is telling you to believe it as it is a fact. But realize that you get to pick one thing as important and live your life according to it, yet it isn't important by most metrics. That's why "being great at..." can't be a thing you valuate according to others/society/whatever. You only can be the foundation of its value. It's a personal, most important truth, not a universal one.

>>8914007
instead of crying how about trying?

>>8914135
thats why im so fucked up thanks man now i get it.

>>8914057
>doing autocad instead of the other 300 low end engineer applicant who didn't get the job

ok mon

>>8914007
Why would you want to be?

Working on professional-level pure math sounds like hell.

>>8914007
Just ask people what they think i'm good at
This encourages me
P.s. lol,pic with russian
Are you from RF?

>>8916244
Agreed dude
u r reading my thoughts

>>8914007
Phenibut inhaler would be pretty cool, why glycine though?