This was me. I feel it’s damn near a miracle I got through university. Make good friends people. Get together with them regularly to study.

Some professors made slides with information in. Some had unrelated pictures where they presumably said the important info. You can guess which classes were hard for me based on that alone (even when id use the course books for those)

It’s a common criticism but do you think a reasonably smart person couldn’t struggle through it? I reckon they’d be especially likely to succeed if they were equipped with a good book and some humility. Humility can’t be given but pieces of advice can. Do you have any good ones?

Yes, 100%. Go talk to people. Travel. Trust. Love. The internet, social media, the news are as real as lord of the rings, or fortnite.

I have almost never met someone evil or truly unreasonable. I have of course left places that were not working for me. People trying to rope me into status games I didn’t care for etc, or pressure me to do stuff I didn’t want to do. Sometimes it’s unpleasant, even painful. But not remotely something that can counterbalance all the great interactions and great people I have met. Heck, it’s doesn’t compete even just the kindness complete strangers have given me.

Catch people who do you harm in a different situation, years later and talk about it, and the same people are often reasonable, open to change, open to talk about why they do what they do.

You don’t have to forgive them. But for me, it helps.

Penicillin? Dust mites??

The Netherlands colonized half the world despite being smaller than Mongolia - Venice was able to stand up to countries like the ottoman empire despite being only a single city.

Financialization isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing either.

Testing (including my own) find some such system prompts effective. You might think it’s stupid. I’d agree - it’s completely banapants insane that that’s what it takes. But it does work at least a little bit.