<p>Take philosophy. Logic is the first phil class people take, and it should be quite intuitive and even easy for someone with a strong background in mathematics. Then you can fulfill the requirement with an upper-division class that complements your interests, though advanced philosophy courses tend to have very cumbersome prereqs, so you may have to shmooze a little to get in,</p>
<p>The physics qual is supposedly one of the few people can fail, but I think you don’t need to worry about that at the moment. Wait and see how you do in your classes first.</p>
<p>A lot of physics people take the reactor operator course. A lot of them drop out of the program because they don’t have enough time, too. Basically many people, mostly science majors, sign up for it at the beginning of every year, and only a fraction of that number makes it to the end of the program. But I haven’t heard of anyone failing out of Reed because of it. If you can’t manage it on top of your course load, you’ll drop it. It’s not a huge dilemma.</p>
<p>Those are the lowest temperatures you can expect in Portland as well, unless you go into the mountain. Portland weather is very moderate and doesn’t deviate from 10 degrees C by more than 5 degrees for the majority of the school year. The weather can be really nice at the beginning and very end of the year, however.</p>