Final Exams vs. Me

I am so not prepared for finals. Well, I am, I have to be. But mentally and physically, all I want to do is take a nap. Recently I have given up on having any sort of self-discipline, and because of it, I’ve been super inefficient. I’ll sit down to study or do homework, and magically a minute later I’m looking up stuff on Buzzfeed or checking Facebook. It’s actually quite frustrating because I end up going to bed really late, and wake up grumpy the next morning. Every afternoon after dinner I sit down on the little couch in my room with the most efficient homework/ study schedule mapped out in my mind. If I were to follow it religiously, I would be in bed by 9:30. In actuality, I go to bed at 11:30 because I decide to relax and take some time to do other things. I really end up annoying myself after I postpone things to the last minute, but then I keep on doing it again and again.

As finals creep around the corner I have to force myself to be a efficient as humanly possible. I want to have a great week next week, be fully rested, and tackle all of those exams head on. It’s going to be tough though. I was ever so briefly looking through my math notes from the entire year and I realized I forgot half of what we had talked about. I guess I’m just sort of in this mode where I learn all the things I need to for just one exam, and then I forget about it when it’s done. My short term memory has gotten great over the years, but my long-term memory is still as selective as ever. And it’s not that I don’t like what I’m learning, I do, but sometimes I just try to cram all the information I can into my brain so that there’s no chance of me reaching a problem that I can’t answer on a test.

I hate the feeling of taking a test and then reaching a problem for which I can’t find a solution. Some people can work their way around problems they don’t understand, but I just find myself wasting time by staring at the prompt, seeing if it will someone make any sense. I don’t want that to happen to me next week. I just want to get those exams done, and then go to Florida with my family. It’s so awful sometimes how they can pile so many exams on you, then expect you to have a delightful break even as you wonder if the error you made on the final will determine your grade in a class. It’s a lot of pressure, and we are conditioned to deal with it, but still, a lot of tests all at once can be a pain. All I can do for now is focus and to the best I can to make the best of the situation. Good luck to all of you taking finals!

Reading vs. Reality

A couple weeks ago I decided to set time out of my schedule for something that I wanted to do. Since I was really tired and I didn’t have that much homework, I decided to just check out a book from the school library. Being the huge nerd I am, I picked up a book about physics. I’ve seriously considered major in something physics-related, so I thought, “Why not?” Anyway, the book did not disappoint. The book I checked out is about the physics behind machines you see in science fiction movies (things like time travel and force fields) and if we can attain/ have already attained that through our scientific standing. The book is called the “Physics of the Impossible” by Michio Kaku, and it was honestly very good. It was short and easy to wrap your head around since the chapters and concepts were interesting, and he didn’t include much in terms of complex calculus.

Now don’t think this is a book talk (although I do recommend this book to anyone that likes science fiction), because besides enjoying the book, it did make me self-conscious. The first few chapters briefly mention the author’s background, and I just was blown away. His childhood dream was to major in physics, and to do that he did something that I think is insane. He built a particle generator in high school that, “...generated a magnetic field of twenty thousand times the Earth’s magnetic field...” He went on to win the National Science Fair and he got accepted to Harvard where he became a theoretical physicist. So after reading forty pages in I finally took the time to look in the back of the book and see who the author was, because I hadn't really placed his name with a face yet. Michio Kaku is one of the co-founders of string theory, and I had seen him in a lot of science documentaries I’d watched as a kid. He was my idol when I was little, and I wanted to be as successful and as smart as he was.

Ok, has it ever happened to you that when you read a book, you start to feel like you and the main character are very similar? Well that’s how I felt about this book as a started to read the first few chapters. But as I read more and more about his life, he and I seemed worlds apart. Frankly, it kind of worried me. I want to be like him some day, but I haven’t won any science awards or taken even calculus yet. It really made me nervous on how little I’ve actually prepared for majoring in physics.

I know that to be a successful physicist you don’t need to have gotten a bucket-load of awards, but it doesn't hurt if you want to be prepared and stand out in a college application. But, I firmly decided not to despair. This is something that I want to do because I really enjoy it, so although I might not be as prepared as others potentially might be, I will try to become more goal oriented in what I want to pursue. This book was fantastic, and although I originally began to worry about my abilities and previous scientific experiences, this book, but mostly the author, have really inspired me to start reaching for my goal. Turns out my light reading was a good choice after all!