I’m a freshman at a private polytechnic institute, and I’m very disillusioned with the whole idea of college. I feel incredibly pressured with the work here and often find myself depressed. Oftentimes I have to find supplementary material online to cover the gaps in the material, since I can’t always understand the teaching styles of the professors or the textbooks. I always feel like I’m required to know the information, but never have time to understand it. I want to study theoretical physics, and couldn’t care less about going into industry. During high school, I was able to breeze through the required courses, and spent my extra time going above and beyond. Instead of filling my spare time playing games and hanging out with friends, I spent it reading, learning about modern physics theories and the upper limits of human knowledge pertaining to the universe. Here, I have no time to explore, no time to understand, and no time to think. I only have the time to study what I need to know and regurgitate it on tests. I can’t remember most of physics 1 because I felt so rushed by work.
I feel that I might be able to do better studying independently over the next three years, learning physics from its foundations to current theories, beyond what they teach at college. I don’t care about the “college experience”, I came to understand physics. I don’t feel like that’s happening, even with the material already covered. I’m considering dropping out or transferring to an easy state school back home, so I can breeze through the work and focus on understanding and learning again. What should I do?
You can drop out and study on your own, but don’t expect to have a career in physics if you do that. You may find it is better once you get past the intro coursework and any gen ed requirements you have – you will be more focused on Physics classes as you get deeper into your major. I know my kid who is a junior Physics major at a very rigorous college says she has gained insight into her intro classes as she has gone further along, as some of the concepts build on each other (and so does the research she is involved in now). If you drop out, Physics will become your hobby, not your profession. So you have to decide whether that is important to you.
Most people who make a career in Physics get at least a masters degree, and many go on to PhDs even if they want to work in industry or a lab. If you transfer, one question is whether that “easy state school” will prepare you well for graduate school admissions. They might, they might not. It depends on the school. And honestly, the physics major coursework is pretty grueling everywhere, including the “easy state school”. And you want to be well prepared for the Physics GRE test whereever you go.
Regardless of your decision, you might make a visit to your college counseling service (usually you can find out about it through the health service if you don’t already know how to find them). They talk to a lot of students who are feeling academic pressure and feeling depressed. They can help you sort this out better than we can, I expect.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, @intparent, ditto.
There are a bunch of possibilities here, such as:
- Your particular institution may not be the right one for you.
- Your physics base may not be strong enough for the classes that you are enrolled in
- You may need different study skills than the ones that got you through high school
- You may just be chafing at having to do tedious foundational work
- Your expectations of what college would be and what college is may be mis-matched
You ‘breezed through high school’, with lots of time to explore your interests, cherry-picking topics as you chose. The requirement that you follow somebody else’s structure is always going to be less fun. As @intparent points out, that is the difference between a hobby and a profession. To pursue theoretical physics as a career you will need a PhD, and all of the top PhD programs will require you to have a solid grounding in the core areas of physics- both in undergrad and grad school.
The physics major is pretty standardized across universities, and if you transfer you will have to take the same core classes- even at your ‘easy’ state school (and btw, a lot of state schools have very strong physics programs- you may be in for a surprise).
Self-study is even harder: you need both lab and research experience, plus recommendations to get into a PhD program.
I second @intparent’s suggestion of a visit to the counseling center- and also to whatever form of study skills support is available. A highly motivated first year with a strong base in the subject shouldn’t be struggling to keep up and not having any part of the coursework be interesting.
And go ahead and check out places that you might transfer: not so that you can go back to breezing through school, but in case the problem is fit, not just adjusting to the rigors of an academically challenging course.