Recap of the past few months. Went on a cruise, lamented being 20-something, nearly hurled myself off the boat in a moment of drunken sadness, returned to the disco and boogied down with some forty year old woman from South Korea (she looked way younger on the dance floor), saw a bunch of pictures of her kids, heard her say something extremely racist, friend smuggled weed on to the boat (only CBD), friend accidentally ordered porn on the TV box and had to call room service to get it to work, was terrified I was going to blink my eyes and be an elderly man who specializes in mortgages and be on that exact same ship, returned to Canada, returned to my $1 over minimum wage working grind where I'm a low level manager of high school students taking shit from everyone and never seeming able to work hard enough. Got transferred stores and am subjected to mysterious schedule changes the day my shift starts and am written up for not knowing), feeling jealous of my high school peers who are in med school (why?), or just majored in whatever would get them middle class quick, worked like a dog, developed a paranoid attitude that everyone hates me and thinks I'm a failure, did vector calculus for fun despite school not being in session, put many more songs on soundcloud despite it being immature. Concluded that the reason I was bored as an adult is because I no longer have sex, drugs, and rock and roll in my life like when I was a teen. Decided to do that again and cried at what a waste of time and money it was. Did shitty ecstasy alone for the first time and read Hubski while turning up the phase shifter on a guitar track. Felt like a boulder the next day. Moved out of parents house (finally), learned how to cook (spaghetti), was berated only once by roommates for not cleaning up, picking classes for next year (5th year, because I majored in econ like a dummy). Discrete structures, algorithms, advanced calc, differential equations, I really want a fucking physics major but I feel like it's a really stupid road to go down despite my brain saying do it and I need to graduate asap. Worried I'm going to get too old for college stuff. Glad I didn't go to law school like I originally intended because my classmates were dumb. Debating whether "follow your heart" is ever a good idea or if pragmatism should reign supreme. Realizing that being bat shit crazy seems to be a common theme in my life and being an artist means one can't avoid following their heart if they fucking tried. Hearing parents non ironically mention us getting married and realizing I'm not a kid anymore. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I love you all.
All good courses, goes double for differential equations (perhaps the most universal thing in STEM), but why exactly do you want to major in physics? What makes it so appealing/alluring? What does physics mean to you? It's been on your mind for some time, that's clear, but I can't recall you going into concrete reasons.Discrete structures, algorithms, advanced calc, differential equations, I really want a fucking physics major but I feel like it's a really stupid road to go down despite my brain saying do it and I need to graduate asap.
Was going to chime in only to voice these exactly. Beat me to the punch. Those are really rewarding classes to throw down in. To the end of universality, in taking these math courses, they will absolutely enrich any physics courses you take since the formulae will show up in fun, sometime (un/)expected correlations. Building on the why is a key answer. Where ever you find the magic in physics. Honing in on the math itself may well be a fine solution to cutting through to graduation, and applying the skills in those math courses to the physics of your fancy afterward.
Regarding my interest in physics, I am obsessed by abstract math but am really obsessed with the dream of somehow materializing my dreams into hardware. When I first encountered the Schrodinger equation in 11th grade chemistry class I literally lost my shit. I love the condensed matter field, I would want to do what much more so than astronomy or string theory. I don't really give a hoot about whatever the origin of the universe was. I have a bit of masculine energy but not enough to make me want to be a mechanical engineer or something like that. I was studying economics for 2.5 years because like I said somewhere else on this site, I wanted to solve all the world's problems when I was 17. I'm a lot more cynical towards political processes now and am not sure what is good for people. I figure a good song or work of art can lift people up more than abstract social plans, and the community organizations I was a part of felt fake. I kind of hate political ideologies and law school now. I took my shitty BA and split because a lot of my classmates hated the gays and I don't want to die pegging the inflation rate at 1.75%. People in the physics department are chill as hell and joke about Karl Marx and hallucinogens. I'm like 21 now so I'm too old for both those things, but still beats hating the gays. What am I going to do, move to America and solve their political problems? Other countries aren't really as concentrated in wealth and power as that place. If I do decide to pursue physics, I'm going to double or minor in computer science because writing software is my fall-back plan, because academic careers seem like the 9th circle of hell. I've never really given a shit about money. I ate bread for dinner one day when I was at work because I'm broke as shit. I suppose a true aristocrat owns nothing. Much more important than money is time. That being said, I find coding to be a bit too easy though. I taught myself how to code when I was 10 (sorry about the flex.... that's #middleclass). I had a domain name, blog I coded myself in PHP/mysql with content management system, apache server, validated login, hashing, input validation guard against SQL injection, pagination, whatever). Of course there are way harder things you can do in computer science and math, but I'm not sure if I'd get there unless I'm in the A.I. department of Google or academia. Also I don't find a lot of tech culture to be aesthetically pleasing.