How to become a top physicist in college?

[Kuhan]

I want to become an extraordinary physicist.

(I wrote top physicist because it's easier to understand, not for competitive reasons. My goal is to contribute as much as possible to physics, not to specifically be the top physicist)

However, I find many obstructions to my goal such as having to take courses in the humanities, lots of time-consuming homework which doesn't make me more valuable and also having no choice but to take like 6 courses which I've already self studied (I'm on quarter system, I already self-studied single variable calculus and Introductory Physics: Mechanics, E&M and quantum&optic but have to take the courses anyway)

I can't take credit for those courses: CLEP, APs,credit by examination or asking special permission don't work.

I wonder how Olympiad participants tackle college: from their experience, what is a set of strategies used to tackle college? I mention Olympiad because these people know a whole lot of college stuff and I'm guessing they have to take those courses anyway.

I have read lots on stuff, basically the only stuff I can relate is Terence Tao and Feynman. I have no idea how Terence Tao zipped through college: I know it's kind of impossible for me because of all the mandatory stuff getting in my way.

What I hate is that I'm forced to do so many time consuming things in college which don't make me more valuable as a physicist. How do I get around this problem?

I probably want to ask this question to a professor at my college in the future, but I hope that the answers here would help me. Thanks!

I find it scary to simply 'not do homework because it's low percentage' because it's graded on a curve.

 

[chill_factor]

Are you the next T. Tao or R. Feynman? Do you know how many people think that?

As for why humanities is important: I've seen enough incomprehensible lab reports to know that humanities is amazingly important.

If not then be regular. If you are, then take 6 classes at a time, get straight A's on all the lower level stuff in a year and then move on.

 

[Radia]

I found my humanities courses to be very relaxing and entertaining...
It honestly sounds like you've got very little standing in your way, try working 30 hours a week
just to keep a roof over your head while in full time classes.

If the biggest obstruction in your path are a few semesters worth of the basics and a few literature courses, then you've got it pretty easy. Unless you've only got 10 years to live or something, a semeter or so worth of review isn't going to be the end of you, heh.

 

[jbrussell93]

I think the introductory physics classes are good for a couple of reasons... Even if you THINK you already know it all. First, they will ensure that there are virtually no small holes in your foundational knowledge. Second, it is when you can compare yourself to other students who also think they are the Feynman. This will give you a better idea of your own abilities relative to others and who knows you may be shocked. And third, you will learn how to study before getting to the upper level classes. It takes some people a little time to figure out what works for them and how to prepare for exams.
Just my 2 cents

 

[WannabeNewton]

I agree that the humanities requirements for physics majors are a complete and utter waste of time and bore me to death but you have to put up with it because that is the system here; there is nothing you can do about it really. If you find intro physics boring maybe you should have taken an honors section.

 

[YAHA]

My friend, before you become a top physicist, it would benefit you to realize that there are other modes of obtaining knowledge and modeling the world other than physics(or science in general). Those are valid models by the way.

 

[twofish-quant]

I want to become an extraordinary physicist.

You'll be doing great if you are an average physicist. For that matter, among the 20 or some Ph.d.'s that were issued in string theory last year, someone has to be the worst of the lot.

What I hate is that I'm forced to do so many time consuming things in college which don't make me more valuable as a physicist. How do I get around this problem?

Have a better appreciation for the arts and humanities. I don't know if there is a correlation, but every great physicist that I've had the pleasure of knowing has also been a connoisseur of the fine arts. Maybe its a coincidence, but there is an artistic element to physics and you can often get poetic inspiration by art and literature.

Now, it is true that college courses can suck the life out of anything, so it will take some effort to actually learn something useful. But that's true for physics too.

The other thing is that it's a long road ahead, and there is no point in hurrying. Reading some literature and art will keep your soul refreshed so that you don't burn out.

 

[twofish-quant]

Are you the next T. Tao or R. Feynman? Do you know how many people think that?

Not sure what T. Tao's interests are, but Richard Feymann was a bongo player. He was also an *amazingly* good writer, and master showman (i.e. what he did at the Challenger hearings). If you want to be like Feymann, I think you need more humanities, not less. You just need to make sure that the class doesn't suck the life out of it.

One reason why Tao and Feymann are so well known is that they are excellent writers that can present complex ideas to popular audiences. There are a lot of physicists and mathematicians that are as smart or smarter, but few with the ability to write and explain.

As for why humanities is important: I've seen enough incomprehensible lab reports to know that humanities is amazingly important.

And the stakes for lab reports are really low. You are going to *constantly* be writing essays entitled "Why you should keep paying my salary and not fire me" Also, at some point you are going to be wondering "so why am I doing this physics thing anyway?" and learning a bit of art and history will help you figure that out.

 

[Kuhan]

Thanks.
Watching Feynman: the pleasure of finding things out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1#at=174
pressurized me to hate the humanities.

I agree that the humanities requirements for physics majors are a complete and utter waste of time and bore me to death but you have to put up with it because that is the system here; there is nothing you can do about it really. If you find intro physics boring maybe you should have taken an honors section.

This (truth) just makes me demotivated. I plan to take honors. (but since I'd need to do more humanities courses [I think so, in UCLA] so it would be a temporary thing, like 3 quarters)

First, they will ensure that there are virtually no small holes in your foundational knowledge.

Yeah I self studied intro physics by rote review and doing exercises. (which is bad)

take 6 classes at a time, get straight A's on all the lower level stuff in a year and then move on.

According to the guides I hear humanities is easy& science is hard so I plan to just spread out the humanities to make my life not impossible.

Are you the next T. Tao or R. Feynman? Do you know how many people think that?

I am inspired to think that way because of T. Tao's writing about genius. http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/ and also basically mathematicians say hard work is important

The strange thing is, in my life environment, nearly everyone thinks it is impossible to be the next T. Tao/ R. Feynman and this makes me demotivated. They imply that no matter how hard one works, one can never achieve anything significant.

It really hurts me when someone says something which sound to me like
"Haha, you're just wasting your time. You're never going to do anything useful."

But my goal is to make significant contributions: not to simply be the top, but to contribute.

try working 30 hours a week

great... I hope to be able to put in lots of Physics time.

One reason why Tao and Feymann are so well known is that they are excellent writers that can present complex ideas to popular audiences. There are a lot of physicists and mathematicians that are as smart or smarter, but few with the ability to write and explain.

This is amazing: I didn't think that writing contributed that significantly to their career. I mean, Terry Tao's blog has lots of math stuff which we don't understand, and he got Fields medal and solved lots of advanced math problem which popular audience don't relate to which I thought were the contributors to his career.

I asked Cal Newport and he gave a very different answer:
see Question 2: Impact Instinct and Becoming a Superstar
http://eraserboxtips.blogspot.com/2012/09/cal-newport-answers-some-questions.html

You might notice Cal Newport says(corrected version) "Most of us don't have that willingness or that time!"

This also pressured me to hate the humanities.

Basically, I guess I have to
-enroll in honors (temporarily and see how it goes)
-choose humanities which improve my writing

 

[cheahchungyin]

Its just about whether or not what you Like to do can earn you a living that can keep you alive to keep on doing it! :D

 

[chiro]

If you want to learn to write, then just write but write in a wide range of contexts.

Do speeches for wide varieties of groups (academics, laymen, etc), speak to different people, read a lot of different kinds of writing styles, follow different mediums and just hone the skills.

You can go to Toastmasters and get this experience for almost nothing, and you'll get critiqued (and it will be really good if you have experienced and knowledgeable members).

Writing essays in humanities subjects IMO will be useless in comparison to the real world experience that you can get by working with other experienced people.

If you can find any opportunity where you have to take the most complex problems and break it down for any audience while making the whole package enjoyable, then you will be a great communicator and if you can do it for both the written and the oral/other kinds of presentations, then that's even better.

 

[chill_factor]

If you want to learn to write, then just write but write in a wide range of contexts.

Do speeches for wide varieties of groups (academics, laymen, etc), speak to different people, read a lot of different kinds of writing styles, follow different mediums and just hone the skills.

You can go to Toastmasters and get this experience for almost nothing, and you'll get critiqued (and it will be really good if you have experienced and knowledgeable members).

Writing essays in humanities subjects IMO will be useless in comparison to the real world experience that you can get by working with other experienced people.

If you can find any opportunity where you have to take the most complex problems and break it down for any audience while making the whole package enjoyable, then you will be a great communicator and if you can do it for both the written and the oral/other kinds of presentations, then that's even better.

If you can write humanities essays then you can, in a written report, skillfully use words to make your idea sound interesting and applicable, instead of boring and totally theoretical.

How else do you explain some of the research that gets funded?

 

[chiro]

If you can write humanities essays then you can, in a written report, skillfully use words to make your idea sound interesting and applicable, instead of boring and totally theoretical.

How else do you explain some of the research that gets funded?

Not true in general.

Speaking to academics and speaking to different groups like lay-people, blue-collar, people with very specific interests (i.e. special interest groups) are very different.

The humanities are really a joke: just like Will Hunting said in his famous scene in the movie Good Will Hunting.

If you want to become a good communicator, then get out there and communicate to a wide and diverse audience and get feedback: writing a few essays in humanities classes doesn't cut it and isn't necessary.

Research doesn't just get funded for the content and construction of the words on a page: there's a whole list of intricacies involved that include (but are not limited to), political, social, and other mechanisms.

It's the same reason why people protect their buddies and give them "contracts" and why "boys clubs" protect their own, and why sometimes the "best idea" just doesn't compare with the "best buddy".

The other thing is who you are dealing with: sometimes an "interesting" abstract is totally useless and if that someone is switched on, they'll see it's just a bunch of waffle BS.

Also being too creative with your "prose" can be detrimental if the other person is expecting a very boring straight to the point kind of response and gets some really long lengthy response that is just completely un-necessary and padded with more euphemisms than the daily limit of a politicians word count.

Being a good communicator means knowing these things, and knowing these things means like all things, getting experience communicating in a wide range of situations and not doing a few BS essays to talk about crap that pretty much no-one relatively speaking cares about or wants to know about and this is one of the reasons why it is so hard to be a good communicator in the first place.

 

[twofish-quant]

Thanks.
Watching Feynman: the pleasure of finding things out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1#at=174
pressurized me to hate the humanities.

There's a difference between hating humanities classes and hating humanities. Badly taught college courses have a habit of making anything exciting and interesting into something dreadful.

One thing about the humanities is that it includes things like current televisions shows, comic books, and other parts of pop culture.

According to the guides I hear humanities is easy& science is hard so I plan to just spread out the humanities to make my life not impossible.

Again, don't confuse humanities classes with humanities.

The things that makes science messy is that you have to learn another language. For example, take any "easy" class that you are planning on taking. Now imagine that the class will be taught in Armenian or some language you know nothing about. The class then becomes extremely difficult.

Also lots of humanities involves coming up with some skill. Learning to play a violin is non-trivial.

The strange thing is, in my life environment, nearly everyone thinks it is impossible to be the next T. Tao/ R. Feynman and this makes me demotivated. They imply that no matter how hard one works, one can never achieve anything significant.

As long as you have a few people that believe in you then no one else matters.

Also, just to compare notes, I came from the opposite environment. Pretty much everyone I met up to age 25 or so expected to me to be a physics superstar. That can create as many problems.

It really hurts me when someone says something which sound to me like
"Haha, you're just wasting your time. You're never going to do anything useful."

Define useful. If you spend an hour, and you figured out how to solve a problem, that's "useful." This is one reason to study the humanities. One thing that you learn when you study history and sociology is why people think certain things are "useful."

The other thing is that we all are going to be dead anyone. I at least managed to figure out how convection doesn't work, because I croak.

But my goal is to make significant contributions: not to simply be the top, but to contribute.

The fact that most of physics involves "grunt work" turns out to be a *good* thing. If you log off right now, find some undergraduate research to do, and then spend months trying to reduce data or debug code, that's contributing.

Also there's a difference between "being at the top" and "contributing." Take the 20 or so Ph.D.'s in string theory. Mathematically, one of them has to be a bottom performer, but even the bottom has to do something original.

One thing that you quickly realize is that research doesn't involve a few geniuses coming up with ideas. It involves a large number of reasonably intelligent people doing a lot of grunt work.

This is amazing: I didn't think that writing contributed that significantly to their career. I mean, Terry Tao's blog has lots of math stuff which we don't understand, and he got Fields medal and solved lots of advanced math problem which popular audience don't relate to which I thought were the contributors to his career.

There are a number of physicists that are as smart or smarter than Feymann, and while Terry Tao is brilliant, he isn't the only brilliant mathematician out there. The reason that Feymann and Tao are both superstars is that they can *write*. The outstanding thing about both Feymann and Tao isn't that they are brilliant (they both are), but that they can write very well and communicate with a popular audience.

I asked Cal Newport and he gave a very different answer:
see Question 2: Impact Instinct and Becoming a Superstar
/url] You might notice Cal Newpo... adds all sorts of unnecessary complications.

 

[chill_factor]

Not true in general.

Speaking to academics and speaking to different groups like lay-people, blue-collar, people with very specific interests (i.e. special interest groups) are very different.

The humanities are really a joke: just like Will Hunting said in his famous scene in the movie Good Will Hunting.

If you want to become a good communicator, then get out there and communicate to a wide and diverse audience and get feedback: writing a few essays in humanities classes doesn't cut it and isn't necessary.

Research doesn't just get funded for the content and construction of the words on a page: there's a whole list of intricacies involved that include (but are not limited to), political, social, and other mechanisms.

It's the same reason why people protect their buddies and give them "contracts" and why "boys clubs" protect their own, and why sometimes the "best idea" just doesn't compare with the "best buddy".

The other thing is who you are dealing with: sometimes an "interesting" abstract is totally useless and if that someone is switched on, they'll see it's just a bunch of waffle BS.

Also being too creative with your "prose" can be detrimental if the other person is expecting a very boring straight to the point kind of response and gets some really long lengthy response that is just completely un-necessary and padded with more euphemisms than the daily limit of a politicians word count.

Being a good communicator means knowing these things, and knowing these things means like all things, getting experience communicating in a wide range of situations and not doing a few BS essays to talk about crap that pretty much no-one relatively speaking cares about or wants to know about and this is one of the reasons why it is so hard to be a good communicator in the first place.

Writing humanities essays is required in university. Since it is required, there's no opportunity cost. You have to do it anyways. It also trains your brain. That's what my physics professors always tell me. Will I ever use my grad level mathematical physics class or grad level QM class? maybe in EM or as background for solid state. But directly, probably not.

Yes, a humanities degree is not so useful. Anyone can see that. However the value of being forced to take their classes is not so obviously useless.

Can you distinguish between the usefulness of being able to write a good English essay and the value of say, real analysis? What can I apply real analysis to that will make me money? If the answer is "nothing" then how does that compare with writing a good English essay that might train my brain to write a memo to my boss saying "I beg you don't fire me"?

If nothing else, it trains you to learn to read emotions. I got my first lesson in the art of communication when I got a C in writing because of, I suspect, a very different opinion from the professor. From then on, I learned to write and say what people wanted to hear, and that has been extremely important for me.

 

[chiro]

Writing humanities essays is required in university. Since it is required, there's no opportunity cost. You have to do it anyways. It also trains your brain. That's what my physics professors always tell me. Will I ever use my grad level mathematical physics class or grad level QM class? maybe in EM or as background for solid state. But directly, probably not.

Yes, a humanities degree is not so useful. Anyone can see that. However the value of being forced to take their classes is not so obviously useless.

Can you distinguish between the usefulness of being able to write a good English essay and the value of say, real analysis? What can I apply real analysis to that will make me money? If the answer is "nothing" then how does that compare with writing a good English essay that might train my brain to write a memo to my boss saying "I beg you don't fire me"?

If nothing else, it trains you to learn to read emotions. I got my first lesson in the art of communication when I got a C in writing because of, I suspect, a very different opinion from the professor. From then on, I learned to write and say what people wanted to hear, and that has been extremely important for me.

One thing I should have mentioned is that I am colored by my experiences since I have done quite a few speeches and evaluations in my local Toastmasters club over the years.

Interestingly enough, I think the best experience that I got when it comes to communication in public was when I did a practicum for high school mathematics: I did this for 10 days for many lessons each day.

This was a great experience because I really screwed up: there are so many things I screwed up on because I never had that kind of experience before. This is even wildly different from the atmosphere of a ToastMaster speech or another public presentation like a speech in a lecture hall or in front of other colleagues which also made it invaluable.

I have a feeling that a lot of the STEM majors do this kind of thing by default, but again I'm not quite the same and when I see (from other people) the stuff they have to write about, I just shake my head.

 

[chill_factor]

One thing I should have mentioned is that I am colored by my experiences since I have done quite a few speeches and evaluations in my local Toastmasters club over the years.

Interestingly enough, I think the best experience that I got when it comes to communication in public was when I did a practicum for high school mathematics: I did this for 10 days for many lessons each day.

This was a great experience because I really screwed up: there are so many things I screwed up on because I never had that kind of experience before. This is even wildly different from the atmosphere of a ToastMaster speech or another public presentation like a speech in a lecture hall or in front of other colleagues which also made it invaluable.

I have a feeling that a lot of the STEM majors do this kind of thing by default, but again I'm not quite the same and when I see (from other people) the stuff they have to write about, I just shake my head.

Agree on all points. The topic isn't important though, even if it is useless, it is training, just as QM is training. It is not directly useful but it serves as the foundation for useful, directly applicable fields of study like semiconductor devices, solid state physics and molecular spectroscopy.

Likewise, if you can write about the implications of English literature in the 19th century, you can also, with proper technical training, write about science.

 

[Group_Complex]

To the OP, I know exactly how you feel, but I also believe most of your views are out of touch with reality.
I used to be like you (Even though I would say we are both around the same age as you are in your first year of college), and I just want to point out that you will never be the next feynman or the next Tao, you will be the next you.

If you want to contribute to physics, stop worrying about it and go and do physics. You probably won't come up with something like relativity or Quantum Chromodynamics, but you will be doing what you claim to love, so who cares?

If you read some of Twofish Quant's other posts you will realize the odds are against you becoming a professor let alone a nobel prize winner. Just enjoy what you are doing for its own sake.

Also, don't try and rush through university. Terry Tao went to university at the age of 12/13 and the normal time in his undergraduate studies. The guy probably knew most of it before going and yet he still did not finish in two years and rush off to princeton. The chances are you are nowhere near as talented as Terry Tao (He was doing calculus at age 6) and you should not aim to follow his accomplishments. Instead you should learn as much as you can in your undergraduate classes. Although I am a first year university student, I am taking third year mathematics and physics courses and may I say that the pace is very fast and you have little time to do extra problems and get a solid grounding in the axioms or fundementals of the subjects before you are expected to prove and do some very non trivial things. I wish I had not rushed and I would advise you not to try it either.

 

[Kuhan]

I've concluded that
-we're forced to take the humanities, so we just have to try to benefit from it
-writing helps in career to fund research and become popular
-non-geniuses contribute grunt work
-"Trying to be a superstar adds all sorts of unnecessary complications."quoted from twofish-quant from "How to become a top physicist in college? ." Physics Help and Math Help - Physics Forums . N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2012. <https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=641070>.

I plan to
-keep my high ambition (of becoming a superstar, without high ambition life would be boring ...)
-work on improving my writing through humanities courses

Also, I plan to create a work/education system where humanities aren’t compulsory and ideas are more important than buddies. Would you guys actually like this work/education system replacing the current one?

 

[Bipolarity]

Humanities depends largely on the professor and on the books that you are doing. In high school I had to read Huckleberry Finn, which I found to be a waste of time. I bulled some essays about Huck Finn and his pet slave Jim. I wasted at least 1000 hours of my time on high school English. If I had done further mathematics in place of those English classes, I would have completed differential equations by the end of high school. My writing skill would be a bit worse, but I would know more math than 99% of college applicants. Also, I don't think I learned any writing skills in that class. Frankly, I don't think I learned anything. High school English is a waste of time.

In university, my humanities class involves reading the Iliad and the Odyssey. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It made me a more optimistic, happier human being, simply because of Homer's humanism. It was refreshing and took the heat off my other engineering/math classes. For my final prokect, we are looking for possible anachronisms in the text. This combines the skills of history, data collection, data organization and interpretation of data.

I am learning a lot more about engineering from this class than I did in my engineering class.

True story. Don't know if it has happened to anyone here. But my professor was just awesome, and humanities in my school is geared towards engineering since I go to an engineering school.

It all depends on what books you read, and whether you think you will enjoy them. Also the professor matters a lot for humanities.

BiP

 

[Kuhan]

Quotes from an article on Terence Tao's education:

"It is important for Terry to have a broad initial education. I can see two different models of how his education could progress. The first is what I might call a "columnar" model, where his acceleration would be directed vertically upwards in maths and physics with little expansion into other areas of knowledge. The problem here is that, although progress may be fast and easy at the beginning, as the column gets taller it becomes more difficult to build on further knowledge, and, to continue the metaphor, the taller the structure grows, the shakier it may become. The other model, which we have selected, is pyramidical in shape, where Terry's work in mathematics and the sciences is integrated with many other areas of knowledge. Initial progress may be slowed down while he explores the relationships between all these areas of study, but as the pyramid gains height it becomes easier and faster and the whole structure rests on a sound base of interrelated knowledge." (B. Tao) quoted from Gross, M., "Radical Acceleration in Australia: Terence Tao." Profoundly Gifted Children Services and Programs by the Davidson Institute. Gifted Child Today, Prufrock Press , n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2012. <http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_

"He recognizes the need to broaden the range of his knowledge by exploring further into the humanities and languages, while at the same time putting down deeper roots in mathematics and physical sciences, areas in which his achievements are already quite breath-taking. " regarding Terence Tao quoted from Gross, M., "Radical Acceleration in Australia: Terence Tao." Profoundly Gifted Children Services and Programs by the Davidson Institute. Gifted Child Today, Prufrock Press , n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2012. <http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_

 

[clope023]

Not sure what T. Tao's interests are, but Richard Feymann was a bongo player. He was also an *amazingly* good writer, and master showman (i.e. what he did at the Challenger hearings). If you want to be like Feymann, I think you need more humanities, not less. You just need to make sure that the class doesn't suck the life out of it.

.

He did all that after he got his phd and after his nobel prize if I remember correctly, his wife called him putsy for being un-cultured.

 

[Geezer]

As for why humanities is important: I've seen enough incomprehensible lab reports to know that humanities is amazingly important.

True.

Good communication is ESSENTIAL to science. If you can't write well, you're not going to have a good career in physics.

 

[Geezer]

I
-non-geniuses contribute grunt work

You're wrong about that. There are plenty of geniuses (as measured by IQ) in physics who make very few contributions to their fields. There are also plenty of smart---maybe not genius-level smart, but still smart enough---physicists who make great contributions to physics because they're creative and hard-working.

 

[twofish-quant]

Humanities depends largely on the professor and on the books that you are doing.

Absolutely, which is why it's really, really important to separate humanities and humanities classes. One thing that makes humanities more interesting is to try apply this to interesting things. For example, I'm a big Doctor Who fan, and some of the interesting parts of literary criticism is to figure out what makes an episode "work". Batman has some extremely deep themes, and you might learn more about humanities listening to a professional actor than a humanities professor. Then you figure out that Shakespeare was the Stan Lee or J.J. Abrams of his era, and then Globe Theatre was the 16th century equivalent of youtube.

Also, one survival trick I learned in college was to make boring lectures interesting. If you have a bad lecturer, just do a Walter Mitty and make him interesting. The other thing is that if you can't learn humanities, you can learn education. Take a lecture or class, try to figure out why it's badly taught, and promise yourself you'll do a better job if you ever get the chance.

 

[twofish-quant]

-non-geniuses contribute grunt work

The idea that society is divided into thinkers and grunt workers and that the thinkers "deserve to rule" comes from Plato. People have been talking about it for hundreds of years, but it helps to know where it comes from.

Also, I plan to create a work/education system where humanities aren’t compulsory and ideas are more important than buddies. Would you guys actually like this work/education system replacing the current one?

Probably not, even if it is possible, and I'm not sure it is.

 

[Kuhan]

I want to be an extraordinary physicist, I feel like I should do something in college that would somehow prove that I'm outstanding
At the same time, it's a bit worrying for me since the general perception of things seems to be "It's impossible to be extraordinary" but I'm persistent on becoming extraordinary anyway.
How do I prove myself? Research? Writing a thesis? telling a professor I know this and that?

 

[chill_factor]

I want to be an extraordinary physicist, I feel like I should do something in college that would somehow prove that I'm outstanding
At the same time, it's a bit worrying for me since the general perception of things seems to be "It's impossible to be extraordinary" but I'm persistent on becoming extraordinary anyway.
How do I prove myself? Research? Writing a thesis? telling a professor I know this and that?

First become a physicist, then worry about being extraordinary. You have 9 years left to go. Good luck.

 

[Kuhan]

He did all that after he got his phd and after his nobel prize if I remember correctly, his wife called him putsy for being un-cultured.

see http://www.youtube.com/embed/Bgaw9qe7DEE?rel=0&start=174

 

[Kuhan]

Me:Also, I plan to create a work/education system where humanities aren’t compulsory and ideas are more important than buddies. Would you guys actually like this work/education system replacing the current one?

Probably not, even if it is possible, and I'm not sure it is.

But it's based on equality and doing what you like...

 

[Kuhan]

The humanities are killing me!
It usually takes 12 quarters to graduate.
I'll have to spend 3 quarters on humanities and 2 relearning stuff I already know
Lol I only need 7 quarters to graduate but look at your educational system: it's forcing me to waste about 2 years of my life.
(3 quarters/year, summer quarter is optional holiday)

 

[WannabeNewton]

The humanities are killing me!
It usually takes 12 quarters to graduate.
I'll have to spend 3 quarters on humanities and 2 relearning stuff I already know
Lol I only need 7 quarters to graduate but look at your educational system: it's forcing me to waste about 2 years of my life.
(3 quarters/year, summer quarter is optional holiday)

Almost all the people I know used high school AP credit to skip all or at least most of the humanities \ social sciences classes. After I used my AP credit I was only required to take one ged - ed class and I'm finishing that off this semester so I'll basically be free of them next semester. I don't think there is anything you can do if you don't have AP \ Dual - Enrollment credits so just get the classes done even if you don't like them. Also, a literary analysis class will help you little to nowhere in writing better research papers so I don't know why people keep repeating that. Those classes are usually called writing seminar or rhetoric which focus entirely on how to write research papers for various fields or write papers in general. A literary analysis class is very different and much less useful.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Kuhan, you seem not to be accepting the advice that doesn't match your original position. There's a term for this: selection bias. It is not the hallmark of a successful scientist.

Furthermore, the curriculum at universities has been set up by people who have gone through the process themselves. Placing your judgment above theirs is also not the hallmark of a successful scientist.

Learning what you can from whomever you can is the hallmark of a successful scientist. Deciding in advance that there is nothing you can learn from a person or an experience is not the hallmark of a successful scientist.

 

[Kuhan]

Kuhan, you seem not to be accepting the advice that doesn't match your original position. There's a term for this: selection bias. It is not the hallmark of a successful scientist.

Furthermore, the curriculum at universities has been set up by people who have gone through the process themselves. Placing your judgment above theirs is also not the hallmark of a successful scientist.

Learning what you can from whomever you can is the hallmark of a successful scientist. Deciding in advance that there is nothing you can learn from a person or an experience is not the hallmark of a successful scientist.

Yes, I am biased towards my opinions and persistent (to what I perceive as a beneficial extent) in disregarding conflicting views.
I'm not open-minded by definition (in specific circumstances).Mandatory means no choice.
I have to do what I'm forced to do.
If college is easy, I'll just have to take heavier courseloads.
College rewards conformity, not independence. (Stephens, 2011)I definitely place my judgment above people who made the curriculum at universities, in the sense that I think the curriculum is seriously flawed and many people know that but can't change it. For example, I can't skip single variable calculus and introductory physics courses (totalling like 6 months of college) just because I know them by heart. REFERENCE:
Stephens, Dale. "College is a waste of time - CNN." Featured Articles from CNN. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2012. <http://articles.cnn.com/2011-06-03/opinion/stephens.college_1_student-loan-debt-college-graduates-richard-arum?_s=PM:OPINION>.[/SIZE]

So far, the 'solution' to my problem is:
-skip Physics/Mathematics lectures since I've already learned the material
-take heavier courseloads
-don't try to be a top physicist

For those having my same problem I'll explain in more detail below:

If you take light course loads and self study a lot, you're cleverer than others but waste time spending more months in college. You might win a couple of Putnams though.

If you take heavy course loads to fill up your time and stop trying to be a top physicist, you win the game! That's right, you're going to spend lots of time learning about things that aren't beneficial.

And don't do long posts, I wasted 20 minutes on this post!
Please ignore the fact that I'll have to waste about 350632 minutes on humanities and easy homework.

 

[Choppy]

I don't get what you mean by "manditory."

Unless I misunderstand, you chose a particular program at a particular university. If you don't like the program or the curriculum you can go to another school or drop out altogether.

There's nothing manditory about that.

If you're concerned about the fact that you need to jump through some hoops to reach your academic goals... your undergraduate years are only the beginning of what's going to be a long life of disappointment.