My plans to study Physics In University. Complicated...
First Post!! :D
I have just completed a year of university and I am dissatisfied with where it is going. It is basically web design, and during this year we learned about CSS yay. Truthfully I thought it was going to great studying a hobby but it’s the opposite, the progress of the course is so slow it isn’t even funny.
Ok now I got that rant out of the way Ill begin haha I always had a love for astronomy and how things worked and throughout this year I have discovered that I want to go into this further. Almost daily I watch or read about physics (Michio Kaku, Richard Feynman etc) and would love to study this full time. So for preparation I have decided to take the essential classes to be accepted into the course (I’ll be 20 when I start eekkk).
What I wanted to know is what your perspective on physics at university level is?
I'll be reading the Feynman lecturers throughout the year and other introductory Year 1 books to get suited.
Are you staying after for graduate studies?
Even though the year or so setup makes me slightly ill when I think about it (Getting old etc) I still love school and learning, the avoiding real life aspect is a main advantage as well.
Should I finish the second year of my current course as a backup if I don’t get the desired results? Or change to something that I would enjoy aside from physics so I won’t be kicking myself in the future.
I tried not to babble haha
Cheers
Posted Aug 20, 2009, 9:51 PM UTC
I was in your situation as well. I was a CS major and, since it is my hobby anyway, I found most of it going to slow. So I went into physics, and have never regretted it. You have to know a lot of calculus and other maths. If you are thinking about doing something physics related for your career, then you will probably want to head all the way up to the Ph.D. level, especially for astronomy.
Thanks for the reply. I love all the options available because I was talking to the student advice guy and he said for masters you can pretty much do anything: from geoscience to engineering. (Another childhood dream was to go on expeditions, maybe geoscience will help haha) I no longer care its going to take me an extra year, imo I probably end up happier with more exciting options. How long did it take you to graduate? Btw do you have any recommendations for refresher maths books?
It took me 5 years for undergraduate (I did CS and physics dual major). After that I took a year off (I highly recommend it to anyone) and then did another 3 years for the CS masters. I don't have any recommendations for math books. I typically just use the Wikipedia and other websites to remember things I've forgotten in years past.