Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Taking a Gap Year or Dropping Out?

Clearly, you do have talent in your chosen fields of study. However talented the majority of us are, there’ll usually be someone more talented (often they’ll have had more opportunities or advantages too). I was quite talented in maths too, but after meeting Terry Tao as a child prodigy and also missing out on the Olympiad team (like you, I didn’t have any help, whereas most of the others had various advantages), I did give up on my dream of a maths related career. Whilst my profession wasn’t what I would have chosen, through discipline & hard work, I’ve still been able to carve quite a successful & rewarding career out of it.

DH had an even greater struggle through high school & Uni, with little to no parental support and worked at many jobs whilst he studied. He has very much earned his professional & academic success.

From your detailed post, you have already gained a lot of useful knowledge and skills in applied maths related fields. I can see some very useful applications for such skills - for example in vaccine development, where the understanding of both topological maths as well as molecular biology would be extremely useful for the absolute accuracy required to target a specific immunological response. There is a wealth of opportunities for someone with your emerging set of skills, but rarely does opportunity just knock on one’s door so you do have to proactively seek opportunities in fields which interest you.

As you are already well aware, recreational substance use will do nothing to help you reach your goals. The benefits & adverse effects of cannabis are widely debated, but there’s no doubt that it can trigger permanent changes in some individuals, although genetic susceptibility is currently poorly understood. Less well appreciated but very well understood is the effect of nitrous oxide on the cobalt oxidation state in cobalamin which results in Vit B12 functional deficiency, which can insidiously cause neurological damage. At this stage, I suspect most of the effects of these substances would be short lived, but I strongly urge you to discontinue these practices.

The world is ever changing. Whilst Big Business has unfortunately dictated how much of and how the world economy is spent on R & D, the Internet enables new ways of learning & collaboration and technology such as 3D printing enables quick prototype construction & proof of concept development. It’s up to you how to navigate this to achieve your goals.