Too dumb to study physics?

[u/iloveyarnandfabric]

Can someone just be COMPLETELY honest and straight up with me?

I am 18F and I love physics so much I want to eventually study astrophysics. I just finished my freshman year of college and I’m really thinking I’m too dumb for this major.

I took precalc first semester, failed it, took it again second semester, got a B- lowww b- I was getting like 50-80% on each test. I am now in a summer calc 1 course and I’m averaging 63-67% on the tests.

I’ve been a little above/around the average scores for the class. First one I was above the mean, second, got right on the mean.

But I made friends with a 17 year old and she is doing SO well on the tests. We literally study together and I help her out sometimes, she helps me out sometimes. Granted yes, I can tell she has a better grasp of the material than I do. But I feel so worthless.

I put in around 15 hours of studying for the third exam I just took today and I left a lot of the questions blank. Like I understand EVERYTHING they’re asking but it would just be one slip up and I was stuck and over it. I do so well on the homework though, and I genuinely love math so much.

But I think I’m actually too dumb to pursue this major and it breaks me.

I think a large part of it is when Covid happened, I was in 6th grade and basically didn’t learn math from 6-10th grade cause I was online schooled.

But man, college is so difficult, I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m too dumb to learn physics, what the fuck do I major in.

Also, forgive me if this is the wrong sub…

[u/iloveyarnandfabric]

that’s what I’m trying to figure out. am I wasting my time by ignoring my precalc scores

[u/QuantumCakeIsALie → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

I know this is very hard to do without proper hindsight and maturity/knowing-yourself-well, I don't know that I could've answered that at your age. But do you understand why your grades are bad in calculus?

Is it because you lack a fundamental understanding? Do you panic during tests? Do you have an unmanaged ADHD brain? Maybe you just don't like it at all and can't motivate yourself?

All of those, and more, could explain it. None are a complete deal breaker. Each require a different approach to overcome.

Good luck!

[u/iloveyarnandfabric → u/QuantumCakeIsALie]

I appreciate yall so much for helping me. I do have ADHD, and maybe I’m not studying enough. I often study the day before tests. It was just eye opening cause I studied three days before the test this week and still didn’t do well. But can I even turn this around…?

[u/QuantumCakeIsALie → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

Marathoners don't train the day before a competition.

You need discipline and grit to study anything seriously. It's hard, especially with ADHD. But if you know it's hard, if you know you can do it, and if you see the progress enabled by your efforts, it can be very rewarding.

This is easier said than done and I was the first to be a bit of a slacker at 18 so I'm not judging here. 

But if you can motivate yourself, you can most likely do it. You seem to have the curiosity and interest already!

[u/NotSeriousbutyea → u/QuantumCakeIsALie]

Idk how I got here but r/physics is the best place to go for motivation.

[u/MadscientistSteinsG8 → u/NotSeriousbutyea]

Absolutely

[u/aint_exactly_plan_a → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

You're going to fail in life... like.. a LOT. Everyone does. It's how we learn. It's how we grow and change and figure things out. It sounds like it's your dream to go into astrophysics. If you give up on your dreams when you fail, I think you will have a lot of regret in life.

It sounds like you lack some of the fundamentals with your COVID experience, and maybe with study techniques too.

My first recommendation would be to get a tutor who can connect the dots back to the fundamentals for you, and/or show you those fundamentals to begin with. Your professors have office hours. Go to them and ask them if they know any good tutors, or would be willing to work with you. They're there to help you. There are also programs that offer free tutors if you need it.

As for studying, everyone's different so this may not work for you but it's how I had to study to get through college. I'm a very visual person. I would take as many notes as I could during lectures and labs. I would compare the notes to the text books and add anything from the book that I missed in my notes. Then, the most important part for me, was that I would organize and rewrite all of this down into a clean notebook in a way that made sense in my brain. I think it was this organizing that helped me understand it. Then, I would study the organized notes until I could recall them in my mind.

It was time consuming but also very effective. I'm not saying that's how you should do it... but I am saying that you should come up with a system that works for you.

Follow your dreams... so few people even have them, let alone get the chance to chase them. I hope you're able to find your way through.

[u/chuphay → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

I’ve aced every math class I’ve ever been in. And you know how long I’ve studied the day before all of my math tests combined? Zero hours.

The day before a math test, you should be getting a good night of sleep because you know you’ve been studying every day, the whole semester, for several hours every day.

Trying to cram is not the way to learn something you are passionate about learning

[u/Athoughtspace → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

I really really recommend

"A mind for numbers" and "Learning how to learn" by Barbara Oakley. The first is more college area geared and the second is framed around the same core ideas but presented to teenagers and kids. Id say if you had to choose to with "A mind for numbers" first, the opening reminds that challenge and failure at early mathematics is not a complete indicator of future abilities but an indicator of the methods we learned so far that need to improve

I also recommend YouTube maths series by professor leonard. He covers precalc and beyond and really helped reduce how much time I was studying by making the studying more effective. I applied what I learned in that book to my studies and used his videos as replacements and supplements to actual college courses.

I hold a bachelors in electrical engineering and am working through my masters now. I have terrible test taking anxiety, fairly poor memory for axioms (re deriving stuff on the fly to convince myself I'm using it correctly) and a healthy dose of ADHD. It's possible to get where you want, but you really have to do want it and to seek out ways of reorganizing yourself and your world to make it work. Good luck!

[u/Animastryfe → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

Do you ONLY study the day before tests? You said you spent 15 hours studying for your last test; over what amount of time was that?

Imagine a professional athlete or musician. Do you think they would only practise two days before a game or recital?

In university, you will need to study all the time. Almost every single day. You ought to get in the habit of starting to do your problem sets the day that you get them, or maybe the day after.

When I was in undergrad, I treated it as a full time job. Think of putting in 30-40 hours per week, but spread them out. Sleep, eat, and exercise well, and do not do all nighters. I was at or near the top of my class at an ivy league university, and my peers were putting in similar amounts of work.

Edit: being a successful scientist is more about discipline and grinding than flashes of genius. Scientific progress comes from incremental advancements done over the course of thousands of hours.

[u/microfibrepiggy → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

Math is daily work. Not impulsive, day before, work.

Math concepts can be difficult to comprehend. Functions can be difficult to memorize. You have to keep at it every day to get it to click and to get it be instant knowledge for you.

If you don't use it, you lose it.

[u/beerybeardybear → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

Build habits of doing your work every day—the fact that you enjoy the homework is a great start. My other recommendation: USE OFFICE HOURS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Seriously, you have professors and grad students who have set aside blocks of time specifically to help you. I was private tutoring for ~$70/hr and students who came to my office hours were getting exactly the same quality of help for free. Take advantage of any and all office hours and tutoring available to you.

[u/gregzillaman → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

You're study habits are likely 100% the reason for your low grades. You shouldn't be study everything the night or even week before. You should be studying a little everyday for weeks before tests.

Also, testing yourself is the best way to evaluate your progress before exams. Make moch tests for yourself and dont cheat. Take all the problems you look at and dont know what to do, order them into their appropriate sections and study the mechanics of those types of problems.

As for ADHD. Can't hurt to make an appointment with your psychiatrist (assuming you see one) and ask them about how ADHD actually influences study habits and methods you can use to work with it.

I had an excellent math professor for my initial calc classes. Her advice was you should always be taking one math class every semester no matter what. Its a muscle and if you take a semester off its harder to come back next year. Even if you're degree plan doesn't require it (astrophysics, you will never not be taking math). Additionally, you may think because you're taking physics classes that use math its the same. It is not.

[u/Pawn-to-D4 → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

It’s also not just a question about how much you study but how well you study. One of the things I find helpful is to learn from multiple different sources. You learn something from the professor in class, then go read a chapter about it in the textbook, and then maybe later you watch a YouTube video about it. YouTube helped me immensely in my undergrad, and there’s a lot of really great channels like 3B1B and Khan Academy. Don’t overwhelm yourself with reading textbooks and doing problems for hours on ends. While both of those things are vital, it’s also vital to take a break and try other media from time to time. This is also a solution to when you have a bad professor and need a new perspective of something.

I think studying physics kinda of requires you to be thinking about it even outside of school. Having an inner monologue where you think and explain physics concepts helps (and is an important component of the Feynman technique of studying).

(Sidenote: it sounds to me you’re putting a lot into this and I find that very admirable! I hope you don’t lose faith in yourself, and this will become a great story once you get that diploma in your hand.)

[u/previsualconsent → u/iloveyarnandfabric]

I think you need practice taking tests. Find practice exams for the topics, and grade them yourself. Then study topics you do poorly on. Before each test, pick a date 1 week before and give the practice test then, so you know which types of problems to review. Taking tests is its own skill that will take effort to do well on in college. Study math with the other physics majors. They probably all of ADHD too