An update from the physicist (aka The Physics Master) - because that's what I'm calling myself from now on

Yes, bloggers. My unofficial name on this blog (besides mistcalnia, of course) is The Physics Master. Written like that. 


Why? Read why here and here (because I don't feel like going into lengthy explanations right now).


But anyway, whenever I talk about school from now on, I'm always going to refer to myself as The Physics Master (abbreviated as TPM). 


So here's another post on school (specifically, about my miserable honors physics class): 


I'm dropping physics. 
Like, completely dropping it. 
No, I'm not going down to regular stupid physics. 
I'm COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY dropping the class. 
Why? 
Because it's making me miserable. 
How?  


Let me list the ways it's making me miserable: 


1) I don't understand the subject. 
2) I don't understand the subject.
3) I don't understand the subject. 
4) I hate it - because I don't understand the subject. 
5) I tried to understand the subject - really, I did, I even made myself read an entire chapter of the horrid textbook - but I still couldn't get a clue. 
6) I don't understand it and I'm stumped with a truckload of homework every freaking week so it's making me stress out, causing me to break out, binge-eat (or not eat at all because I'm so stressed) and just plain messing up my body. 
7) Seven things is a lot of miserable things to say, is it not? I think I'll stop here. 


There. That's why. 
So I'm gonna go to my guidance counselor tomorrow after school (oh, and by the way, we had a snow day on Monday and today due to the unexpected and dangerous accumulation of snow during the first snowstorm of this school year (on Saturday, October 29), that is, if I ever find out. I was supposed to meet with him after school today but obviously that guy is never around when I need him, unfortunately. On my only free period of the day, he's teaching Chemistry. Now, don't you people agree that a high school guidance counselor should be just a guidance counselor and not a teacher as well? He teaches Honors and AP Chem, which requires a lot of grading time. But seriously, it's not like he has enough to do already with being a guidance counselor for a senior ESPECIALLY this time of year. 


I'm so confused about my college list and where I'm applying and all that, and I DESPERATELY NEED HIS HELP. 


Oh well. 


But on the bright side, I'm dropping Physics, so that'll leave me another free period to meet with him and have some time together so he can help me sort things out. 


Phew. That was a lot to say for one post, so I'll stop there. 


Once I've talked with my guidance counselor and finalized where I'll be applying (although I put up a tentative list here even though I said that was 'final' but I guess nothing's ever 'final' until you are done applying and are then just waiting to hear back) I'll let y'all know the 'final' list. 


Until then, ciao! 

Good news from the physics master!

Hello again.


Well, not one of you bothered to give me any advice about whether or not I should drop physics (thanks a lot, guys, I feel loved. Really), but hey, it's not like I was gonna listen to you anyway. 


Well.......maybe just a bit. 


But anyway, I realized that I forgot to add one more CRUCIAL piece of information on my last school-related post ("Physics is driving me INSANE!"), so here it is: 


I'm thinking of going into Med School in the future, God-willing. 


I don't know exactly what it is I want to do for the rest of my life (that's a tough decision for a seventeen-turning-eighteen year-old to make, wouldn't you agree?) but I know that one of the things I'd like to do is to become a clinical physician. More specifically, I think I'd love to do Oncology (cancer) and its various symptoms, causes, treatments, etc. It sounds really interesting and rewarding, too. 


But that's my second choice. And it's my second choice only because of the fact that I like so many more things (namely, writing) that I want to go to college and find out if there's anything else for me besides Medicine. It's of course a very prestigious and rewarding field, but it might not be for me, or maybe it might, who knows. That's why you go to college - to discover your passions. 


So anyway, the only reason I'm making myself struggle through Honors Physics with a scraping B- is because of the fact that I'm going to take Pre-med in college, and the first requirement for a first year Pre-med student is one year of Physics with Lab. So I figured that if I dropped Physics altogether and don't even have a basic understanding of it in college, then I'll really struggle - this is nothing compared to that.


So yeah. 


What do you guys think? Any advice (other than the ones you've already offered, of course - NOT)?


But seriously, any advice whatsoever from any blogger out there - doesn't have to be a follower - but anyone who's passing through this blog on their way to some other more interesting place on the Internet and their eyes just happen upon this particular post? 


C'mon . . . anything at ALL? 

Physics is driving me INSANE!

A list of the classes I'm taking for my last year of high school: 


AP Calculus A/B
Honors Physics
Phys. Ed - STUPIDEST class EVER (I could've taken AP Bio instead, why must we go through this in our last year of high school I honestly don't know)
AP European History (known as EHAP or AP Euro)
Anatomy/Physiology
Economics (mandatory for all seniors who haven't taken AP Macro or AP Micro yet)
AP English Literature and Composition (AP Lit)
AP Spanish II (a two year course, we take the AP Exam at the end of the second year)


Out of ALL of my classes, physics, my only non-AP academic class, is the hardest for me. Every week I am trudging by, miserably failing my homework, but I don't want to drop down to regular Physics either because a) it's a stupid class and b) it'll mess up my whole schedule and won't leave me room for the classes I actually care about. 


I hate these kinds of situations when you love the teacher who teaches your class, but you hate his subject. Our teacher (we call him Mazz) is AWESOME and absolutely insane, but hey, that's what makes a great physics teacher, right? 


Right. 


But I am having a seriously hard time keeping up with what he's teaching, because Physics is a hard subject to understand conceptually, and Honors/AP Physics is EVEN harder. I understand AP CALC better than Physics, which I don't know if it's even possible or not because Physics (at least AP Physics) IS calculus. 


?????


Anyway, to get to the point of this whole rambling post (I do that a lot, by the way, rambling, I mean) last night, as I lay in bed with a SEARING headache, I seriously considered dropping Physics altogether. I mean, when I first thought of it like three weeks ago I immediately discarded the idea because I was like, "Well, I know I'd feel guilty in the end for having not learned the most fundamental science of all sciences." Seriously, Physics is the basis for everything; bio, chem, earth science, you name it. Which is why it took me this long to come to this realization: Physics is making my other grades (namely Calc) spiral down to F-land (the world will end when I fail an entire class. LITERALLY) and I really don't want that because I want college admission officers to look at my transcript and say, "Now there's a girl who can take four or five APs and handle them all swimmingly!" I want to maintain around the B+ to A+ zone, and I just can't do that with Physics taking up my energy, time, and concentration. 


So I'm thinking of dropping it, but I'll audit the class instead. Meaning that I'll still show up, do all the work, take the tests, but it won't appear on my transcript. Basically, it means that I'll be an invisible, non-existent student in that class who does all the work but it doesn't count on her transcript because it's not there as a class she's taking. I know some of you will be like, "But what's the point of that?" 


The point is, that I'll still be learning the stuff in that class (maybe) but if I don't do well on the tests/quizzes/homework (which I KNOW I won't - if I'm not even understanding the easy stuff, how will I understand the harder things to come?) it won't impact my overall GPA negatively. 


I currently have a 4.1 GPA right now (I think the highest GPA in our school is 4.5) so I DON'T want to lose my rank/standing in the first decile of my entire grade of about 400 students. 


Yeah. 


So, what do you guys think? Will it be worth it to continue struggling through Physics just to "learn" the subject (which I won't even, probably) or drop it and just audit? 


NEED ADVICE NOW!!!