<p>I'm not sure if this is the correct sub-forum to post in, but I am in need of some advice on what to do.</p>
<p>I am 24 years old and I live with my mom and my half-sister. I started my undergraduate career recently after a long feud with my mother. My mom says that a physics degree is useless, and I told her about the various jobs in research and development or finance I could get as a physics Ph.D. She says that it is unrealistic because I am not smart enough for those things and that I should just work in a trade such as plumbing or carpentry or something. She believes that I have narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies because of the fact that I have the grandiose idea that I think I can do physics, and she thinks that only geniuses like Albert Einstein can practice in the field. I don't personally know any "normal" physicists, so I could not provide support for my defense. I tried to show her this CollegeConfidential forum, but she's technologically ignorant and thinks that every member on this forum is a robot or something. She can't seem grasp the concept of the internet (she's over 50 years old).</p>
<p>So I ignored her and try to study for school anyway, and she says that I should at least work full-time to pay the rent and bills because she's getting old. I don't mind working, but in order to maintain my current 4.0, I feel that if I begin to take hours off studying to work, my grades will drop. I asked her to hold out a few more years until I begin my Ph.D program, but she says that all of her friend's kids worked 50 hours a week while maintaining 4.0s and went to graduate schools like Harvard, Yale, etc. albeit for literature or some other subject in the arts, which she claims are all more difficult than the field of physics. She also thinks that another characteristic of being a sociopath is studying 12 hours a day (which I usually do) and thinks I need psychological help because nobody she knows studies that much and believes those kinds of hours to be irrational, although I know many students on this forum probably study for those hours.</p>
<p>The reason I cannot continue to ignore her is that she takes me to school and asks to check my class schedule, and I have to be home whenever I'm not in class or else she'll kick me out of the house and then I won't know what to do when I don't have anywhere to go. But when I am home, she won't let me study. She scolds me for hours on end and talks mostly about God. If I try to study or don't listen to her, she will take my schoolwork/notes and rip them up. On a couple occassions, she threw my laptop on the floor in attempts to break it (fortunately, unsuccessfully). Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night if she can't sleep because she's worried about me, or has a nightmare about me failing in life or whatever, and wakes me up and begins to scold me again about life. Our family lives in a studio apartment, so we all share one room, and it especially annoys my sister (who wants to drop out of high school when she turns 16, smokes, does weed, drinks alcohol, etc.). So basically, none of us get along.</p>
<p>The primary issue I want to focus on is to how to get more study hours in so I can still maintain my 4.0 GPA before applying to graduate school. Do any of you know of techniques of studying aside from traditional textbook reading/solving problems on paper so that it looks like I'm not studying? Or maybe some ideas on how I may be able to reason with my mother or some other suggestions on how to escape from this situation? Thank you.</p>