| > I'm two years before heading off to university, but I have no motivation to learn the things that are being taught at college. Personally, that was a really tough time for me in my life. > I chose to study the subjects that I thought I would enjoy, but sadly this isn't true. That happened to me too. > I'm assuming that if I had made other choices for subjects, I'd be in a similar problem. Maybe; it's hard to know where other paths would have led. > Maths is one of the subjects I'm studying, and although I enjoy maths itself, I'm not enjoying what I learn in school. I had that same experience. That's why I studied maths on my own, outside of school (I consider programming a subset of maths.) > I can't be motivated to put the work in, so that I can get good results at the end of the year. Same thing happened to me. > I spend my free time programming or researching instead, That's also what I did. Studying philosophy also helped alot :-) > but I can't continue doing this if I want to get the A-levels I need to enter a half-decent university. I found my high school to be very oppressive, so instead I went on academic strike and programmed for fun. I almost flunked out of high school, and only got into one university that has a tradition of accepting everyone. It was all for the best. I'm not saying you should do that. But, it was the path I needed to take. You can live a wonderful life regardless of what academic success you achieve or fail to achieve. Older people have a bad habit of advising younger people they need to do very specific actions in order to achieve very specific goals. In this ancient tradition, I will now offer you very specific advice ;-) (1) Ask yourself: do you desire the goals you are told to desire. What are your goals? What do you actually want from life? (2) Once you have your goals in mind, your advisors will usually be conservative. That is, their advice usually describes one path to your goal --- not the only path. For example, if you want to go to a half-decent university and an advisor tells you, "you should try to get straight A's" --- then your advisor is being conservative. Yes, if you get straight A's it will be easier to get into a half-decent university. But it's not the only way. Furthermore, younger people are often more creative in finding ways to sidestep tradition. (3) Ask for lots of advice, but only listen to advice skeptically. (4) Don't be afraid to "Go ahead and fail." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-20/go-ahead-let-your-k... > Are there any ways by which I could motivate myself to study more? I would caution against trying to coerce yourself into being more motivated. Follow your own path. When people give you advice it's up to you to take it or leave it. Even this advice. |