Serious motivational problems - Page 2

I developed a similar problem in junior year of high school.

When my first girlfriend dumped me at the end of sophomore year I reacted by working 24/7 on math for a summer. I went through MOSP in June and in July and August I read 7-8 books and finished the core of the undergraduate math curriculum.

But when I got back to high school and saw tons of girls around me I got lonely as fuck and started lashing out at my parents and crying all the time. I lost all motivation to do anything but stare at the wall and grow increasingly angry.

My parents forced me to see a psychologist but I rejected his attempts to help. I didn't feel comfortable being forced to see someone. I was still getting As in my high school classes by scribbling homework down during lunch or on bus rides, and I think this helped me hide from the magnitude of the problem.

I convinced my parents to let me drop out of high school and "homeschool." I spent my days at the local state university even though I was not an official student.

I ceased being able to write anything. When I was assigned an essay I would stare blankly at the wall for hours instead of doing it.

I worked for months with a professor and came up with some detailed original research, solving a conjecture that had been open for 10 years. The professor wanted to publish the results. First, he wanted me to write up my work carefully so that he could check it over. I couldn't write. I spent the rest of the year avoiding the professor who had been so kind to me. I didn't answer his emails and I was terrified I'd run into him on the street.

When I got to MIT this fall I was excited by the change of atmosphere. I took a political science course and I wrote essays for it. But towards the end of the term I saw a girl I had a tremendous crush on kissing some other guy.

All of a sudden I couldn't write the final paper. I would just stare at the wall and not write anything. The final paper was worth 60% of the grade, so the TA begged me to write something. He told me I had submitted the best short essays he had ever seen in 3 years of TAing the class. He emailed me for months asking me to submit something late. My grades in other classes slipped. The graduate math courses at MIT were harder than anything I took at the state school, and I couldn't afford to be wasting time staring at walls while trying to write essays. I stayed up every night at home over Christmas break until I fell asleep from exhaustion at 4AM, promising myself I would write the thing. I told my parents I was playing Starcraft but in reality I was just staring at a blank Microsoft word page. Sometimes I would cry and sometimes I would feel completely comatose.

I never finished the essay. The professor give me a C anyways, on the back of my previous work. The first semester at MIT is pass/fail, so I had a perfect record. I spent the little time that was left before the Spring semester catching up on the math I had missed. I didn't sign up for a writing course. I still had a perfect record, and just like in high school this blinded me and made me feel like I could be OK and get back on track.

I met a girl in the middle of the spring semester. We talked a lot, and I was somehow able to convince her to become my girlfriend though she strongly resisted my first few advances. She was strange and incredibly frustrating in some ways. She would never initiate contact with me and trying to hug her was like trying to hug a limp doll. She told me she never had a crush in high school. She didn't understand why anyone would want to kiss and she thought it sounded revolting. Eventually she told me she thought she didn't feel anything for me and was uncomfortable dating.

All of a sudden I couldn't do math. I would try to do math and wind up staring at the paper. Every night I would try to do math and often wind up crying, occasionally vomiting. I thought about killing myself a lot. My parents got a letter saying I had failed a bunch of classes. I went to the mental health people. With help, at home and away from the bad memories at school, I finished the work late. Thanks to the quality of the work and the generosity of the professors I still have straight As.

If something like this happens next semester I think I will kill myself, which is why I'm working closely with the mental health people now.