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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Anonymous wrote:
Maybe I'm just dumb, but I have a hard time understanding really boring, complicated material, which made up most of my legal studies.

I'm a lawyer who sort of likes things that are boring and complicated, but I don't think it is reasonable to characterize all law as consisting of such matters. There are lots of practice areas (family law etc.) that are more interesting and understandable, if less lucrative.

OP here. Thanks for your insight about this. Am I just dumb? I graduated with honors from high school and went to an Ivy League college and graduated with honors from there. But honestly I have an incredibly difficult time understanding things that are boring and complicated. What do you like about boring or complicated things? I can't concentrate and zone out when I am reading such things. For instance, health insurance. I cannot seem to understand my health insurance policy or how the benefits work, and whenever I call the health insurance company to ask a question I don't understand what they are telling me. So my husband handles this. Investments are another area that I don't understand, and I also find it boring and complicated. I'm a fully functioning person otherwise, but boring or complicated things are very hard for me to understand. Do I have some sort of learning disability?

FWIW, I took organic chemistry in college and got an A, so I am capable of understanding some boring and complicated material.
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Please stop asking if you are dumb because I'm tempted to say YES, you are dumb, but not for the reasons you think.

The thing that makes you dumb is not that you don't understand certain things, it's that you make excuses for what you don't understand by calling those things complicated and boring. Seriously, you sound like an entitled whiner who had every opportunity to pursue whatever you wanted to, parroted what was expected of you, and then rejected the skills and experiences you had the luxury of gaining because you found it all so boring and complicated. You sound lazy. Very, very lazy.

That's what you sound like. That might not be who you are. You may be depressed and overwhelmed and without guidance. You may be realizing that career success, or any success, doesn't depend on checking off an A in a class.
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OP here.  You are right, everything you said about me, you are right.  I am lazy, and I have very little career motivation these days.  I attribute this to 2 things: 1) very, very low energy (have had blood tests, and the only thing they can find is very low Vitamin D levels, which I have taken supplements for, but it has not increased my energy.)  I've been low energy since high school.  Have been tested for thyroid, Lyme, etc. everything is negative.  I saw an endocrinologist, they found nothing.  The low energy makes me feel very tired and lethargic a lot.  I feel that I don't have a ton of stamina to tackle the complicated and boring material.  I zone out with boring and complicated material a lot.

[b]2)  Career failure after failure has made me not want to try, in order to not continue to fail.  It's easier to not work hard/not try and therefore not fail than to work hard and try hard and fail.  I have worked hard professionally and personally and failed so many times that my self-esteem is in shambles from failure after failure.  [/b]I'm not sure how to recover from this.  I tried therapy, I found it unhelpful.  I was thinking today about how I could slowly try to build my self-esteem again--maybe setting very, very small goals, succeeding in those, and then tackling larger goals.[/quote]

Hi OP,

I'm sorry you've had such a hard time professionally.  I do wonder what you characterize as "career failure" and whether you're being far too hard on yourself. Just the way you speak about yourself signals very low self esteem - which you acknowledge - but also suggests a narrow definition of success.

As you likely know, you can learn and grow professionally and thrive in a job and not necessarily make it as a CEO - that's not a failure.  You can do a job or be on a career track and discover that you actually don't like it ... and that's not a failure.  That's actually a good thing.  You can be good at your job but contend with things outside your control which make it hard to be as successful as you want to be ... and that's not a failure either.  So what is it that constitutes "career failure"?  And what in your mind is success? Maybe answering those will help identify where to focus your efforts for the future.  [/quote]

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