Welcome—your story is interesting and I hope you stick around!
I’ve sung this song before, but from what you say your worries are, one thing that would give you a real lasting boost in your general effectiveness would be learning to program. Have a look at CodeYear—online lessons that start slow, lots of my friends have been having success with them, and you can ask me for help if you get stuck—paul at ciphergoth dot org. Not only is it a directly useful and highly employable skill; it teaches useful habits of thought in several distinct ways.
Another thing I’d recommend if possible is giving as little attention as you can (even down to none at all) to the question of whether you’re intelligent enough. Such concerns can be remarkably draining.
I agree with NancyLebovitz about not focusing on your IQ. You story and actions show that you are more than intelligent enough to get along doing whatever! Your curiosity, and willingness to do things (like move to a different country) in pursuit of your goals are way more important than having to read things a couple times to understand them.
Friendly advice- Try breaking long chunks of texts into much smaller paragraphs. It makes reading your story (and it’s a very interesting story that deserves to be read!) much easier. If you don’t feel like figuring out where natural paragraph breaks are, then just go through and put one every couple sentences!
It sounds like you’re in DC. They have a pretty active LW group, afaict. If you haven’t yet, you might want to join their google group here.
Welcome—your story is interesting and I hope you stick around!
I’ve sung this song before, but from what you say your worries are, one thing that would give you a real lasting boost in your general effectiveness would be learning to program. Have a look at CodeYear—online lessons that start slow, lots of my friends have been having success with them, and you can ask me for help if you get stuck—paul at ciphergoth dot org. Not only is it a directly useful and highly employable skill; it teaches useful habits of thought in several distinct ways.
Another thing I’d recommend if possible is giving as little attention as you can (even down to none at all) to the question of whether you’re intelligent enough. Such concerns can be remarkably draining.
I agree with NancyLebovitz about not focusing on your IQ. You story and actions show that you are more than intelligent enough to get along doing whatever! Your curiosity, and willingness to do things (like move to a different country) in pursuit of your goals are way more important than having to read things a couple times to understand them.
Friendly advice- Try breaking long chunks of texts into much smaller paragraphs. It makes reading your story (and it’s a very interesting story that deserves to be read!) much easier. If you don’t feel like figuring out where natural paragraph breaks are, then just go through and put one every couple sentences!
It sounds like you’re in DC. They have a pretty active LW group, afaict. If you haven’t yet, you might want to join their google group here.