[username90]

Different people need different advice.

I love solving problems and am very good at it but writing things down makes me hate maths, the act of moving the pen is much more effort than the problem itself. I used to stump my professors by solving the problems they were explaining in my head long before they would have gotten to a solution. But then I got diagnosed with ADD after I completed my masters, I can write down things no problem when I'm on medication, but if people forced me to write down everything in school when I were undiagnosed I likely would have dropped out of middle-school and maybe even committed suicide. Several of my siblings dropped out of middle school so that is not an exaggeration.

I don't think that not writing things down held me back, I think it forced me to become creative and learn things properly since I couldn't just follow algorithms blindly like my classmates. So maybe I should be grateful that I was diagnosed late and thus forced to invent my own maths throughout college. I likely would have gotten perfect grades with medication, but I'm pretty sure the things I learned and the intuition I built are way more valuable than grades.

But if someone like you came around and thought I did things wrong then you would have ruined my life. Please don't force that on someone else and when they inevitably fail you just say something like "I guess he wasn't that good after all, nothing I could've done!".