How did PF change you??

nickadams

PF made me start actually caring about learning rather than just trying to get an "A".

rollcast

It made me realise how dummed down alot of our physics and maths is in school and how much I still have to learn.

It has shown me to evaluate everything and not take it at face value.

ApplePion

I learned that people obsessed with exterminating "crackpots" (both actual crackpots and imagined crackpots) are almost always crackpots themselves.

Ryan_m_b

Darth Frodo

PF has taught me to work my a*s off in college because grad school is so competitive not to mention academia...

jackmell

Things I encountered in PF led me to publish a paper and work on another I hope to finish one day. Nothing great, just something I wanted to do.

I doubt seriously I would have been led to do this work without PF.

phinds

After a lifetime as an electrical engineer, then computer programmer, then techincal project maanger, I decided to learn a little more about cosmology and quantum mechanics, and I wouldn't have made it without this forum. There are a lot of good books out there for beginners such as me, and I have a couple dozen of them, but there are always things that the books don't quite manage to get across to me and reading stuff here, and asking quesions, has made it possible for me to get through the books.

SO ... I'm really grateful to PF and particularly to the mods who spend a lot of their personal time getting rid of cranks and keeping the discussions more or less on track.

Also I used to be frustrated by all those nifty science TV shows because I was sometimes PRETTY sure, but not 100% sure, that they were often spouting nonsense. My response now is that I think they're a hoot and I continue to watch them. I trash them unmercifully on this forum, because they deserve it, but now that I KNOW when they are wrong (and they are not ALWAYS wrong by any stretch) I just laugh at the stupid parts and enjoy the pretty pictures. Call me shallow

And last, but not least, although it might be hard to believe on seeing some of my snippy posts to folks that I have no patience for, I really AM practising restraint and trying to "suffer fools gladly", although it remains quite a challenge for me. That's always been one of my failings and I'm happy that PF gives me an opportunity to work on it.

I REALLY enjoy the crank-free "hard-love" atmosphere here and I admire the patience and determination to be helpful by so many members who persist in the face of apparently willful misunderstandings by newbies. I try, not always successfully, to emulate their patience and that is helpful to me. My son tells me I am mellowing in my old age and at least some of that is due to PF.

Thanks again to the mods.

Paul

cobalt124

It made me regret I didn't care enough about learning rather than just failing (for the most part) to get "A"'s.
PF taught me critical thinking, my limitiations and ways to learn.
Thanks to PF, I can now spot crackpots in all walks of life and I don't have to bother with them.
PF is one of the few sites on the internet I trust.
I wish I had more time to post, I barely have time to read PF these days.
Still the best site on the web.