I am fairly confident that this question falls under "good subjective" per the help page--I am unsure of where else to go otherwise.
I'm hoping to start an academic career in HEPT/mathematical physics. I'm in my freshman year at a US flagship but am somewhat advanced (taking topology, complex analysis, familiar with the absolute basics of abstract algebra). And I'm having trouble getting anywhere, at least to my standards. As a firm believer that most of what separates the best from the average is experience, I'd like to spend as much time as I can working on blasting even further ahead in the subjects I love above almost anything else. Yet I find myself cranking out 150 hours in League of Legends in my first semester.
Some of that is probably a lack of consistent motivation. But some of that lack, I feel, stems from the absence of any sort of track to follow, no footsteps to trace. So I'm here.
Specifically, I'm here looking for people's stories, and recommendations. Side paths (mostly in the form of high-quality, plentifully-problemed texts), not to be made redundant by standard academic curricula, that I can follow to learn without the setback of constant googling of definitions I should have known prior to jumping into a text I close permanently at page 23. Paths to higher analysis, dynamical systems, ergodic theory, differential geometry, and anything else I'm too poorly exposed to know about that is of use/interest to the mathematically-minded physicist are more than welcome. But anything helps.
Thanks.