My experience with higher education (maths & physics)

[Admin]

I had a really great physics teacher in highschool and i wanted to actually understand how the world works. I had some ideas for it and i was thinking that if i studied physics at a university i would be able to make progress.

At highschool i got the highest possible grade in every maths and physics, i got graded 7 times in total. I also got a diploma in maths. I tried to enter into a solo maths competition but i was 6 or 7 points away from that, the entrance test consisted of 6 questions worth a total of 42 points.

In any case i was well prepared for higher studies, i didn't take any break from highschool, i went straight into university physics and Lund University

 

[Admin]

Episode1: classical physics
We studied basic electrodynamics, classical mechanics special relativity and optics in a single term (about 5 months).

The labs we did were interesting but it was ruined by the fact that i had to constantly document everything for the report (i wasn't really able to enjoy it). We measured the gravitational constant G and got it right within about 1%

I did a special project where i built a plasma speaker together with another guy, we later played classical music via that speaker for about 300 individuals.

There was however several red flags that i mostly ignored because i had a great time
0. The pace was really high, they just rushed through important subjects and it was difficult to keep up. I would have liked to learned more about electrical engineering.
1. A guy claiming piezo crystals were used within high-end speakers (they are not).
2. i got deducted about 3 points for using 2 significant digits instead of 1 on a test, the whole system with significant digits is idiotic since you just make the expected error bigger by giving a single significant digit answer, there was nothing wrong with my answers there.
3. Another guy claiming replacing speaker cables would improve sound (i actually pointed out for everyone he was wrong).
4. The special relativity teacher was very bad.

 

[Admin]

Episode2: math
We started learning math we should have been though before going into classical physics.

This was done at the mathematics department which was managed far better, i cannot think of anything bad regarding them except for the fact that they are not really focused on teaching stuff that's useful in the real world, at least not directly. You can probably learn what they teach on your own if you have discipline but then you will not get official credit.

The exam i wrote in analysis 1 was more difficult than usual, 75% failed including a guy who told me he was really motivated to work hard after having a day-job at a storage center (he ended up having to redo the math, poor guy).

i did well and got the highest possible grades "VG" on the maths while i only got the low grade "G" in physics (i did poorly on lab reports).

 

[Admin]

Episode3: Quantum Physics & math
Now a year had already passed since i started studying and i had been doing well so far, this was about to change. In a period of about 5 months we had to learn the following

• Quantum Mechanics
• Statistical mechanics
• Calculus with several variables, (30 points at the math department), i passed and got credited 10 points.
• variour other things crammed into a 10 point course.

The quantum mechanics teacher was pretty great when it comes to introducing quantum mechanics and explaining it "nobody understands quantum mechanics", unfortunatily for the students he was an asshole and we were not given a proper exam, i never tried to pass this since i got too far behind and my problems started snowballing from that point.

The asshole QM teacher also failed me twice on a report i had to write (i had passed all others for the 10 point course) i ended up not getting any official credit for all the work i had put in.

 

[Admin]

Episode4: advanced modern physics
During this one year period it was only the advanced quantum mechanics exam i failed (got 40% twice) but still i only passed two 7.5 courses despite (of 30 points in total), it was the lab reports that failed me. I did fail the solid state physics exam the first attempt but i got 75% on the oral re-exam, i passed all other exams the first try.

More than once i was told after many months (maybe over a year) that i had to redo the report and in these instances i simply refused to do that (resulting in the institution losing money). In some instances i wasn't even motivated to try writing a report when i had to pass on all 5 to get credit.

 

[Admin]

Episode5: switching to the math department.
I decided to properly redo the mathematics the lund university had just rushed over, i did attend all lectures but i didn't do anything more than that, i passed both exams and got credited 30 points.

I continued the studies (passing everything with minimal effort) until the point where i only needed to write an graduation thesis, before that i took one year break until i later was able to start writing a thesis with the help of Eric Wahlen, i figured out he was a really solid guy and later i found out he had won a price.

http://www.maths.lu.se/nyheter/visa-nyhet/article/wallenbergpriset-i-matematik-till-erik-wahlen/

I got the highest possible grade on the thesis "VG", the subject was mathematical physics.

 

[Admin]

I later tried doing a course on differential geometry but i missed the first 1 or 2 lectures, got too far behind and it was too difficult, i decided to drop out partly because i no longer had any cheap way to travel to the university.

I want to pass the advanced quantum mechanics exam, i should contact the university again and ask if i can write it & when.

I would also like to properly study General Relativity, i regret not going into theoretical physics.

 

[Admin]

Mass-psychosis
There was a lot of fanboyism going on where we were telling ourself "this university is great" when the reality was the exact opposite of that, it wasn't "great" at all.

I once made the delusional comment to someone "it's not about what they teach us it is that we learn to think properly" and he of course bough into that cope but i myself even then didn't really believe it, you don't learn proper critical thinking at universities.

I remember clearly how the particle physics teacher asked "what is a force" and the students gave the answer they had been brainwashed into believing "force is something we measure with a Newton-metre" so he had to give up and tell the students the current theory

"force is due to exchange of force carrying particle"

This of course doesn't properly answer it either but by then it had became clear there were no real answer in established physics, it was very measurement focused but they cannot make sense of their measurements, building larger particle accelerators will not fix that problem.

The only force that is somewhat explained is gravity (due to curvature of spacetime) but we still dont have a clear unified theory and in general physics is really frustrating due to the lack of answers.

 

[Admin]

What my exam results indicate
What actually worked was studying and thinking and attenting all lectures. Doing calculations didn't really lead to better score on the exam.

I passed an exam in discrete mathematics that a third of the students failed even though i was just writing the first exam as an exercise, i had hardly studied anything on my own, i simply listened to what the teacher did and i was somehow able to figure out what to do on the exam.

But i failed the exam in ordinary differential equations twice even though calculated a lot then (to get extra credit for the exam), they had an idea that you would learn by working actively on solving problems on your own but that didn't actually work for me at all.

 

[Admin]

Issues with the lab reports were

1. they didn't properly teach us how to write them and whether or not you passed (and your score) heavily depended on who graded the report
2. no unified standard for lab reports so we had to guess what they wanted.
3. If they didn't pass you on your report you might get it back a year later and then you have forgot about what you did so it's difficult to fix by then.

I personally hated the lab reports which is one of the reasons why i realized it wasn't for me.

All the stress associated with these things caused me to lose interest in physics as a subject.

A lot of the things i learned studying physics was things that can be very valuable, there was however severe issues with management.

As for lab reports, that's not how labs worked where I studied (in short you did your report in the week after the experiments, had to go have it checked by the advisor who let you pass or found flaws that you had another week to correct). I guess it's fair to assume that most places don't work as you describe.

That is of course a far better system.

I did get a lot of support when writing my bachelor thesis and this is why i did well on it.

 

[Admin]

Yeah, pace is high, that's because within 3-5 years you are brought from zero to being able to start doing research. And university is the only place that successfully is able to put you into that position in that short amount of time.

The issue i took was that they didn't properly cover a lot of topics becuase of the quick pace and we wasn't properly tough the maths required for it.

I wasn't studying physics to become some low level post-doc slave

I was studying physics because i wanted to better understand our universe and to learn things that would be valuable later.

 

[Admin]

My degree
Physics: 45 points
maths: 120 points
Bachelor Thesis: 15 points (mathematical physics)

 

[Admin]

What i did wrong
I didn't properly research what to study and the order, i trusted the system and got burned by it. Here is what i should have done

1. study more maths first before going into physics, i did it in the wrong order.
2. forcing myself to do lab reports instead of researching cryptocurrencies.
3. not going into theoretical physics or engineering instead.
4. not leaving the student union earlier.

I didn't go into theoretical physics because i wanted to learn something that would be useful in the real world. I have now changed my mind regarding that and i now want to pass the advanced quantum mechanics exam i got close to passing twice earlier and i also want to properly understand general relativity.

For vintologi i need to also study quantum field theory.

 

[Admin]

Can issues can be fixed?
They have already changed so you will learn more maths before returning to physics again (60 points instead of 30).

The issue with lab reports shouldn't be too difficult to fix, i dont think it's fair to burden post-docs with having to go through lab reports. They could also reduce the number of reports to write by having you submit as a team or only require that you attend it for a passing grade.

The only proper solution to the pace issue is to improve lower education so you learn the mathematics you need (cross product, taylor expansion, etc) before going into the university.

They used to have you begin with mathematics instead of physics (so you would be better prepared) but then they changed to the wrong order becuase too many people dropped out then. I think it's better that people drop out early than to end up as my poorfriend, i dont know if he ever graduated, probably not.

 

[Admin]

People that saved me
There was one older guy (who i regret not talking to more) that pointed out that "arbetsmiljöverket" (department for work environment) would never approve of the conditions where were subjected to as students. Once after we were asked as students to suggest improvements they guy pointed out that the students before us had pointed out the exact same flaws and of course nothing had been fixed.

We were supposed to learn python at the university but but luckily 2 other guys essentially saved me by taking me in on their team and and i didn't have to do much programming (i realized the language wasn't for me), my social skills saved me there.

My supervisor help me a lot when i did my bachelor thesis and if it wasn't for him i don't think it's possible that i would have failed to graduate.