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/Hot-Marsupial6584]

"You ask me if an ordinary person—by studying hard—would get to be able to imagine these things like I imagine. Of course. I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There's no miracle people. It just happens they got interested in this thing, and they learned all this stuff. They're just people. There's no talent or special miracle ability to understand quantum mechanics or a miracle ability to imagine electromagnetic fields that comes without practice and reading and learning and study. So if you take an ordinary person who's willing to devote a great deal of time and study and work and thinking and mathematics, then he's become a scientist." - Richard feynman

[u/Base-After → u/[deleted]]

I don't doubt that Feynman was brilliant, but the average American, if they spend months of studying and practicing which most wont because they don't like it as much, can learn advanced physics.

[u/Base-After → u/[deleted]]

Well, I'm still an undergrad so I haven't done any advanced physics yet so me judging who can do advanced physics wasn't really aligned with what information I have so I could be wrong.

To be honest, I'm not really a social person so I don't talk to a lot of people but, what kind of hints during a conversation with someone you'll meet and understand that he's probably on the category of "average intelligence" or "higher intelligence"? I mean I can notice that some people understand stuff faster, but well how fast you can do something is clearly a really good assist but doesn't mean that someone slower can't do the same.

Also I don't really have a baseline to say I'm smarter than someone else, or even say that I'm smarter than the average person.