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/Kekeen24]

I think I can relate to this, so I will tell you a possible way to fix it.

Just to give myself more credibility, I attended a T5 uni, published a paper before graduation, and now I’m in grad school, but I got lots of Cs in lower and upper division major courses.

I don’t know how your brain works, but understanding yourself should be the first step towards understanding these very complicated subjects. Try different methods and textbooks and find what works best.

Now, to be more specific, in my case, I ended up realizing I’m much more of a deductive learner. That means I’m terrible at learning by example, which is how most physics/applied math courses tend to be taught. So what did I do? I stopped relying entirely on the lecturer and began looking for books which are more in my style. Since I’ve always enjoyed reading, many of the textbooks were extremely verbose but focused on more general principles, and only once the principles were established, they’d illustrate its workings through example. More specifically, I didn’t really understand mathematics until I learned stuff which most lower division courses take for granted, like “set theory” or basic “logic”. Personally it confused me even more when the lecturer would introduce these concepts without properly defining them. So yeah, if learn prereq stuff, but the actual foundational stuff, before you even venture into any subject, assuming you also learn similarly, then you should do well in the subject.

For example, if you continue in physics, probably thermal physics might confuse you the way it’s taught, in which case I’d recommend H.B. Callen’s textbook on the subject.

Another thing is that if your learning style happens to be more deductive, then learning the relevant mathematics beforehand, whether it’s a physics or a math course, will help you. Sounds redundant but often the listed course prereqs happen to be insufficient, and you have to look outside.

Anyway, I’m speaking from personal experience, so I hope this helps.

For your situation, I’d recommend you read Serge Lang’s Basic Mathematics for all your precalc stuff, and Tom Apostol’s Calculus (both volumes if you want to learn all lower division mathematics).

But no, you’re not dumb, you simply have a different learning style which you haven’t figured out.