Reddit mentions of How to Study as a Mathematics Degree

That's a fair point tbh. A lecturer at my uni specialises in undergrad maths education so she really knows how students learn best. She actually gave us a document of a chapter on time management from her book on how to study for a maths degree, but I have to be honest, I haven't read it yet. If anyone's interested it's this one. We also have a Maths Learning Support Centre where we can drop in and ask lecturers for help on something, not like office hours.

It's a common occurrence in mathematics to come across some Greek you don't know, which then means that you'll have to do "the usual yoga" -- make up exercises and examples until you've worked yourself into whatever you're looking at, as opposed to expecting to understand everything by reading about it.

From what you say I infer that you can do and have done that, as such I doubt you can really put yourself into the mother's shoes -- because this fundamental stumbling block of not learning a thing because you believe you can't ever learn it vanishes once you've had the experience that with some yoga, everything can suddenly very well work out.

How can you invest time and effort into understanding something if you haven't learned that you can understand things that way?

That's btw also why not few people who aced maths in school drop out of maths at university: The smarter you are and the easier and "obvious" things for you are in school, the less likely are you to actually develop that skill. If then on top of that you're arrogant enough to miss the pointers your professors throw at you, you've set yourself up for failure.

Raw intelligence without grit and the wisdom of how to apply it to things amounts to little. And makes you quite likely to end up linked on this sub. Have grit and sufficient wisdom, however, and it doesn't matter much how much raw intelligence backs it up, you'll excel in one way or the other.

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Thinking about it, I guess /s would've been a better choice than :) in my previous post. I do get it, I just have enough practice to usually overlook that path.