Do I need to fall in love of everything?

[alivedude]

I'm a second year grad student within engineering physics and after this I am going to take a master in theoretical physics. My plan is to go even further with a PhD when I am done.

The thing is, I really don't enjoy some parts of my education. I love the theoretical part of almost everything, I am really good at very abstract math and physics but I feel that classical mechanics is one of the most boring things I have ever done. The theory and derivation of it is fine but when it comes to the problem solving it feels like the only thing I am doing is reading some 400 years old methods and repeating it.

So my question is, do you need to like the whole "package" to be a good physicist or is it normal to feel like this about some areas in the field?

 

[DrClaude]

There can be many reasons why you don't like some parts of physics. Sometimes it can have nothing to do with you, like a bad teacher or a bad textbook, but here can be things which you just don't care about. The important thing is not to dismiss these areas. Do your best in these classes, as you never when something you found boring will be highly important to really understand something you care about, or whether some methods learned for x will be useful to solve y.

Simply bear with the material you don't love, and one day you might be done with it and concentrate on what you do love (until you're asked to teach that boring subject ).

 

[jtbell]

Simply bear with the material you don't love, and one day you might be done with it and concentrate on what you do love (until you're asked to teach that boring subject )

I had trouble getting "into" classical thermodynamics. I got a B- in my graduate course on it and had to repeat it. Then I ended up having to teach an undergraduate thermo course for several years!

 

[alivedude]

Haha you are so right! The thing is, I am really good at things like classical mechanics but I still find it so boring. I like the theory and I the fact that I understand how rigid bodys move and how I can use Hamilton and Lagranges equations for systems but when I see those problem sets with bike wheels and homogenous bars and all kinds of stuff like that I just want to put all the books aside, I guess that's why I'm more into theoretical physics than normal engineering :)