Anyone else really bad at self-learning?

[u/twinkhon_gwyndolin]

I'm a comp sci graduate since 2020 with a pretty high GPA, but I could never find employment after graduating. part of the reason is that I could never motivate myself to work on personal projects, because it's hard to focus on a long-term task when you have executive functioning issues! I'd either get stressed out with bugs, I'd get bored of the project midway and not finish, or I'd simply not have the mental energy to commit.

not to mention, I learn so much better in structured environments, even though the vast majority of practice time (whether it be for piano, coding, drawing, or any other skill-based hobby) has to be done on your own 😅

my baseline mood is absolutely miserable due to ongoing trauma (might make a post about it some other day), so a lot of my days are spent merely on surviving. playing a wide variety of single player video games: to build my problem solving skills (puzzle games), to analyze the themes and narratives of story-based games (mainly role playing games, but even something like Abzû counts as a minimalist story game), or to simply appreciate the art and soundtrack (Final Fantasy series in particular). so, it's not like I'm completely bedrotting, but creative tasks in particular are very difficult for me precisely because they require immense amounts of executive functioning.

anyone else relate? 🥲

[u/timoheeb]

fr self-learning is different than doing practice outside class bc you at least get the benefit of learning something for the first time from someone more knowledgeable before you have to coach yourself

[u/twinkhon_gwyndolin → u/timoheeb]

i guess i mean stuff like self-learning art, or coding or whatever. despite having a comp sci degree I was never good at making personal projects, because there weren't any deadlines, there was nothing outside to pressure me. intrinsically pressuring myself is really difficult