I entered college knowing I loved chemistry, but wasn’t sure if the most interesting and useful path to a successful future would combine this with engineering or biology or something yet to be determined. I emerged from 21W and PHYS 13 with a newfound appreciation for physics and a recognition that I actually liked the subject, and not just reading the occasional book about space. I also learned that I much preferred the problem-solving and concepts of chemistry, physics, and math courses to the incessant memorization of some introductory biology courses. I also realized that while computational skills are something I’ll need to hone for use in research and likely a career, I also wasn’t enamored with the need to learn lots of computer science and spread one’s scientific foundation thinly as was required in an engineering course of study. I first considered a modified major, then the possibility of minors in astronomy and physics or a second major in physics to accompany a chemistry major. Either way, my chosen undertakings will be nontrivial, but I am excited for what the future holds.
Phys 14 was a fascinating dive into the electromagnetic force. I found wonder in how common cases of symmetry simplified Coulomb’s Law and the Biot-Savart Law into, respectively, Gauss’ Law and Ampere’s Law, and how Maxwell’s compilation and correction of the fundamental EM laws revealed beautiful parallels between the forces and the open question of magnetic monopoles. I found circuits rather frustrating, but analyzing them was still interesting and horizon-expanding. I proved to myself that I could come to love the struggle of wrapping my mind around physics more complicated than the mechanics I’d already been exposed to in high school.
I know I’d need more time to come to love linear algebra. I had a great experience in Math 22, but just started to warm up to the new way of thinking (after no math apart from the road to calculus for so long: precalc as a junior, AP Calc AB as a senior, Math 8 in the fall, and Math 13 in the winter) by the end of the term. I think I’d get more direct utility out of the applications we covered were I a CS major, but it was all still very interesting. It was a bit jarring at first to participate in math so computationally simple, with difficulty made up for by a wealth of proof-style thinking and “reading between the lines” of definitions and their implications.
To be quite honest, at the very beginning of the term I wondered if I’d made a mistake by enrolling in Engl 7.46. I gravitated to the course description that promised a synthesis of analyzing literature of migration and crafting narratives with similar, but more personal, themes. I wondered if it would be like those “tell your family immigration story!” writing prompts from elementary school. At the core of it, there was some overlap in this sense. But this course, quiet though many of our discussions were, was so much more than that: in each essay, I realized that I was finally expressing ideas I’d been unsuccessfully trying to capture on the page for some time. Some readings were deceptively simple, others were more serious or canonical, but all fostered valuable discussion and reflection.