It’s amazing how easily the word “line integral” reduces me to a sweating, and panicking puddle. “Stokes’s Theorem” does almost the same thing, though not quite since I’ve completely forgotten what it was. A gaping hole in my already bullet torn mantle of knowledge and confidence, multivariable calculus could be the thing that finally ends my dream of a physics major at Swarthmore.
It is at this point in which my friends and my family say, what are your worrying about? You’ve made it this far. You can do two more years! To these responses I can only sigh and smile. Mislead as they are, it is nice to have their false confidence, and even nicer not to have their pity. Pity is what stalks success in the night. Enough people looking at you and thinking “it’s a shame she’s so stupid” and soon your thoughts align…
“It’s a shame I’m so stupid. I won’t pass. Why am I trying?”
On the other hand, I wish for someone who could understand and sympathize with coming so close to the knife. I’ve had college professors tell me to my face that they don’t believe I’ll make it. I used to come out of every physics class close to tears, and I still might revert to that next semester. My control has never been as complete as people think it is.
It is also at this point, where friends and family suggest I retake multivariable calculus. I did well with my first attempt, however the class was a month long summer course with students who thought the cross product difficult to master. Furthermore, I had to leave a week early and covered the last week of the class in two days. Needless to say, I retained nothing I learned in those last two days.
Retaking multivariable calculus is a very good suggestion. I believe it would help me a lot. Still, I won’t do it. Herein lies my true problem.
I refuse to take multivariable again, because I don’t have the time. I don’t have time because I’m not just learning physics, but writing English papers and becoming fluent in French. I also started the damn Swarthmore composting program, and I’m going to stick with it. Lacrosse is my outlet for the growing anger at my inadequacy, and volunteer fire fighting subdues my urge to stop waiting for my education to end and just do things. The result of this essentially quadruple major (physics, English, French, extra curriculars) means that I can only give 25 or so hours to physics a week. This is 10 more than everybody else spends, but likely 10 less than I truly need. So far, I’ve only gotten by because of the help from two, solid A friends.
I know dropping something would be detrimental to my sanity, but this doesn’t comfort me as I lie in bed at night thinking, what if I can’t do it? My nerves stretch more as I look ahead one semester, to the physics courses I’ll have to take without my friends. What if I can’t do it? It’s not like I can work with any other physics majors. I have tried, and they all work too fast for me to keep up.
But what if I can’t do it? That’s a question I don’t have an answer for. What is I can’t do it? Where will I go? What will I do? I don’t have answers for those either. I guess it’s one of those do or die trying things. I’ll try until I die. I’ll do it, or I will never have to sit up at night again, wondering about failure.
THE POST POST:
So what are students with diverse interests supposed to do? Swarthmore is a liberal arts school, and thus even in the places where you are supposed to diversify, the sciences are unforgiving to those who want to run, write, speak a foreign language or do any number of things at the same time. This seems strange to me, because people are always complaining about how science students can’t write, talk, and are the weediest people you will ever see. In one way it makes sense. Technology is advancing at such a rate that it’s difficult to catch up unless you spend all your time studying it. However, we need more in our engineers, doctors, physicists, and biologists than just study machines. Perhaps we need more diversity in our college major system.
Some things to think about.
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