Exploring Love for Physics: How to Focus on One Area Despite Many Options

[thatwentwell]

I don't know how else to express it. Vacuum moduli spaces, supernovae, the hodge star formulation of Maxwell's equations, black holes, SU(N) gauge theories, QED, ARPES, superconductors.

I fricking love it all so much and I want to learn it all but I feel like I have no time to learn anything.

How can I focus on just one thing when there so many vast areas of things to learn? What made you fall deeply in love with one topic over another related one?

 

[micromass]

Yup, welcome to STEM, where there is so much cool stuff that it's hard to pick one.

There is an entire spectrum of scientists out there. One way to distinguish scientists is the "depth-broadness" scale. That is: some scientists will prefer to dig deep in one small topic, other will try to learn a lot of topics. This is not a black-white scale of course, but people fall somewhere in this spectrum.

Myself, I lean heavily towards the "broadness" part of the spectrum. I like to learn about all kind of different, but neat stuff. I have noticed though that this caused me significant problems. A researcher in university is expected to gain depth in a special topic and to make new advances there. Some level of broadness is required, but too much broadness really harms a researcher. So if you prefer a broad knowledge over a deep one, then be prepared to have a tough time in academia.

 

[Student100]

I don't know how else to express it. Vacuum moduli spaces, supernovae, the hodge star formulation of Maxwell's equations, black holes, SU(N) gauge theories, QED, ARPES, superconductors.

I fricking love it all so much and I want to learn it all but I feel like I have no time to learn anything.

How can I focus on just one thing when there so many vast areas of things to learn? What made you fall deeply in love with one topic over another related one?

That's what graduate school is for. For right now, focus on getting a broad education in physics during undergraduate.