- #1
RubinLicht
- 132
- 8
Feel free to skip to bottom to read the questions. Below is some relevant background.
I'm currently an undergraduate freshman in EE. I find physics exciting (not sure if I like it because I'm good at it, or I'm good at it because I like it), so I'll be taking most of the courses that a physics major would take. I'm, however, aiming to do EE in grad school, not physics. After grad school I currently intend to go into industry.
For EM and some other classes, I recently decided that I would do ~30 textbook problems per chapter/week (currently using Purcell, previous course used Kleppner), or until i feel confident that I'd be able to come up with a solution to any of the remaining problems decently quickly.
However, there's an issue with time consumption. As most of you know, problems from these two books can sometimes be mind bogglingly frustrating and hard to solve (until you solve them!), and may end up taking up much of my time.
In the Mechanics course, I effectively did all the problems in Kleppner, and ended up setting the curve for both midterms and the final. However, I wonder if this level of mastery is worth it?
Question 1: is it worth it to spend the additional time to master the material of every class (physics or otherwise) to this extent, rather than allocating it to, say, engineering clubs or research(more on this)?
Question 2: what are the things you would tell a freshman to start doing if he is aiming for Grad school? Should I be getting into research as soon as possible? Focusing on courses and building a strong foundation?
I attend one of the stronger UC campuses. (so USA based, in case location is relevant)
As always, I thank this forum for being such a great resource.
I'm currently an undergraduate freshman in EE. I find physics exciting (not sure if I like it because I'm good at it, or I'm good at it because I like it), so I'll be taking most of the courses that a physics major would take. I'm, however, aiming to do EE in grad school, not physics. After grad school I currently intend to go into industry.
For EM and some other classes, I recently decided that I would do ~30 textbook problems per chapter/week (currently using Purcell, previous course used Kleppner), or until i feel confident that I'd be able to come up with a solution to any of the remaining problems decently quickly.
However, there's an issue with time consumption. As most of you know, problems from these two books can sometimes be mind bogglingly frustrating and hard to solve (until you solve them!), and may end up taking up much of my time.
In the Mechanics course, I effectively did all the problems in Kleppner, and ended up setting the curve for both midterms and the final. However, I wonder if this level of mastery is worth it?
Question 1: is it worth it to spend the additional time to master the material of every class (physics or otherwise) to this extent, rather than allocating it to, say, engineering clubs or research(more on this)?
Question 2: what are the things you would tell a freshman to start doing if he is aiming for Grad school? Should I be getting into research as soon as possible? Focusing on courses and building a strong foundation?
I attend one of the stronger UC campuses. (so USA based, in case location is relevant)
As always, I thank this forum for being such a great resource.