I'm writing this on the heels of another trip down the self-hating, intelligence-worshipping rabbit hole I'm so used to. So forgive the intro.

Studying will never make you intelligent. At best, it can be a cover-up for average-person deficiencies and worthlessness compared to the intellectually gifted. But I can't deny that studying is useful for the average person, if only to be able to do useful things.

Except, how do you do it?

As I've failed in my life, I used to have parents and counselors begging me to study, like everyone else. But I don't know how. As I see it, studying is just reading the book over and over until you memorize it. And I have a hard enough time with focus I've never been able to do that. In school (pure college), all I had to do was read and I would more or less memorize something, maybe with a few notes. Math was different, I'm stupid, so it was just a matter of doing problems and remembering how to approach each type of problem. Theory, what's that? I wouldn't understand it anyway.

Is that really what people are doing when they "study"? Reading the same books and notes over and over again until it sticks? How the hell can people do that for hours on end, and have it be effective? I suppose I can't see it working for me - I'd never be able to focus long enough or memorize with that kind of precision. I'd get everything confused.