master the subjects you hate: a how-to guide (from someone who has done it) ˖ ࣪ ·͜·♡ 𝜗𝜚˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡ 📔🎀
have you ever had that one subject which has always been your problem subject? where every time you study it or sit in class and see others succeeding effortlessly, all you find yourself wishing is that you could just master it and move on with your life?
well, this was me my entire life, up until a few years ago. the dreaded subject? mathematics. but instead of suffering endlessly under the torture of its reign over me - I decided to take a different approach. what if i could master it? no longer have it haunt my shoulder in life?
well, that's exactly what i did.
and now? i'm a biomedical engineering major.
okay, okay. am i saying you will now become a famous philosopher, writer, mathematician, historian, artist, etc. by following these tips? of course not. it can happen though. or at minimum, that subject won't be an enormous pain in your side anymore. which is very much worth it, in my opinion <3
♡ step 1: get clear about your goals.
first, you need to outline how you envision yourself. back when I was in grade 10, there was a moment when I realized just how annoyed I was with not understanding math. i took out my journal and started writing out my goals for the subject. what did I want? i wanted to be able to solve problems effortlessly and get my homework done. i wanted to truly understand the subject - not just enough to finish the homework but enough that I could write any test and ace it.
back when i changed my study game, it was all during covid, when we all went online during school. i was in grade 9, and with those last few months of school online and with the summer, I decided to change my life.
if anyone remembers 2020/2021, im sure you remember the craze over bullet journalling. that's what I used for all this. i used it to plan out my days, which let to me planning out different things I visualized myself as I changed my life, and that included mastering my subjects and becoming that studious it girl.
write out these goals. figure out exactly what you want. make a vision board, use Pinterest, use your notes app. figure out who you want to be.
♡ step 2: romanticize (but not in the way you think).
if you've made it this far, you may be like "this is such generic advice for general goal planning. what is so revolutionary about journalling ?" stick with me. trust. this is the step that revolutionized my study game. it made me go from someone considered a pretty good student to someone that teachers would talk about, someone who was not just pretty good but excellent.
so what did i do? its not "romanticize" the way everyone uses the word these days, exactly. and its not really a very pretty or aesthetic method. but it works.
see everything with a different lens.
take math, for example. the way i always viewed the subject was basically just something I would probably never understand, something I just wasn't gifted in. i was always a really good writer, remember? i was going to do a bachelor of arts in psychology and go to med school and be a doctor. so math? wasn't my thing. i never understood it the way my friends seemed to so effortlessly do. but that still bothered me greatly.
instead of viewing it as this enigma, I took a more pragmatic approach. what if I simply broke every single concept down to its most simple parts? and what if... i changed the narrative? instead of it being hard, difficult, not naturally gifted at, impossible... what if I just pretended I loved everything?
i call this "romanticizing", or more accurately probably, gaslighting. i kept telling myself over and over and over again that I loved this subject. specifically, I repeated these a million times and deliberately in my head:
✧ i love math so much!!!!
✧ math has and always comes so naturally to me
✧ math is my favourite subject
✧ math is actually really easy, all I have to do is break down the topics
✧ i can understand every single thing I learn
years later, manifestation and the law of affirmation really started gaining traction in social media. but its funny, I accidentally invented this strategy for myself when I was 15. I didn't even know what manifestation was; I just decided that I wanted to no longer struggle. and look, here's an important fact to remember: I did not do all of this so I could become an engineer. i literally wanted to be a doctor, and becoming an engineer was a funny side-effect of becoming so good at math and wanting to pursue it more than other subjects. with this method, which I still use, I actually, genuinely fell in love. It taught me where my true interests lie.
some other essential things i did?
✧ inspire myself with history and context. i always loved history and research. if I wanted to inspire myself into a topic, I researched the history behind the mathematical subject. for example, for trig, I researched where the original trig functions, cosine, sine and tangent came from, learning the history behind mathematics and Egypt. and let me tell you, I never forgot my trig functions after that.
✧ ask the teacher for help every single time I had even the smallest, most insignificant question. and if still no good answer i google, and then, only then, do i ask my friends for help. teachers are literally paid to help you. so many students forget this and get intimidated. don't let this be you. what sets top and stellar students apart is doing uncomfortable things. i literally don't care if you sit with the teacher the entire class, lunch, after school etc to understand that topic. you do what needs to be done.
✧ master every single small detail. i started realizing that all the small details of misunderstanding were what were hindering my understanding. you know when you do a problem and there's this baby question you have that stops your understanding at like 85% instead of 100%, and you're too lazy to ask the teacher or a friend or you just don't get a good answer and drop it? don't do this. i became obsessive about ensuring I understood a concept literally 110% before moving on. the history research helped so much with this. i remember even for chemistry, I would read university-level pages on topics so by the time the test came, I would be such a master at the topic I felt like I could teach the teacher, or write and mark the test. true understanding and passion made me not just a master of a topic but genuinely intelligent and able to come up with my own interpretations, opinions and shortcuts in my subjects. you would think opinions and interpretations are only in the arts. you would be mistaken.
now this point all might be a little controversial since it may seem a little obsessive and time-consuming, but anything worth it takes resources. and I never said it was a pretty method. but it does work.
✧ stopped viewing teachers in a negative light. you know how when you have a teacher and everyone says, "this is the worst teacher ever, you will hate them" or "I feel so bad for you, no one has ever passed in their class"? danger, danger, danger. never let others form opinions for you. i started ignoring absolutely every single thing a person said about a teacher. i started gaslighting myself into beliveivg every single teacher was amazing and would help me and I have no issues with them whatsoever. now of course this doesn't count if there is a serious issue with a teacher where they are doing things that need to be reported. I'm talking about when everyone hates a teacher for being a hard marker or a bad explainer. don't view your teachers in that way. and it won't make you a teacher's pet, trust me. after I did this, teacher's were so warm towards me and I really became memorable to them, especially since I would ask so many questions (helpful for letters of reccomendation). i remember there was this one teacher we had where literally no one, in all his years of teaching, would ever get more than a 60% on a paper. everyone hated this man. but I focused on what he wanted from us: and delivered. which no one ever did. i realized he was pushing us to write the best papers we ever could. and I got 100s in his class. people literally had no idea how I did it. i simply smiled. and my writing skills after being taught by him and listening? insane.
♡ step 3: watch your life change.
okay, here's the part where things really come together. once you start with one subject, watch the effect spread to your other ones. once i mastered math, you better believe i did the same thing with physics. this subject especially i ignored everyone's perceptions and focused on myself and my own learning. i didn't care what other's thought at all. this expanded to chemistry, and biology.
what was interesting what its effect on english and history. i mentioned that i was already a pretty decent writer and was doing well in these subjects. but all of this? i subconsciously started applying these principals to these subjects, too. it made me a phenomenal writer. and i started reading more, more advanced books, asking more questions, thinking more deeply, writing more complexly, all applying these principals.
once you become passionate about something, replace negative thoughts/phrases with positive ones, watch your life change. that passion? it will show you what you are actually, truly interested in. i was always an ambitious child, i always wanted to be a doctor. not because my parents wanted me to but because i had an interest in medicine, though i was always on the fence about dealing with patients everyday since its not really my thing exactly. but once i started realizing i am the master of my fate, and i can master anything i want, i realized that i was very interested, talented and passionate about the intersection of technology and medicine. i went from ambitious.... to driven, sharp, laser-focused, a force to be reckoned with.
i could talk endlessly about this. its something i am very proud of and has genuinely, sincerely changed my life.
if you have any questions, let me know below. and if you want to learn more about biomedical engineering, let me know and i will consider making a separate post about it ! thanks for reading <3
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