The Lament For Icarus By Herbert James Draper

" You are killing me, and you are keeping me from dying, that is love."

- Mahmoud Darwish

musings on poetry Anne Sexton, Victoria Chang, Carl Sandburg, Carl Sandburg, Richard Blanco, Henrik Edoyan, Anne Sexton, Czeslaw Milosz, Richard Blanco, Mary Oliver

Learning to like Physics

I actually cannot believe how much I used to hate Physics until last year, but then I actually took the time and effort to understand it and?? it’s so cool and fun and easy?? unreal.

It literally seemed impossible for me and I legit thought I wouldn’t be able to graduate because I was never gonna pass Physics (I’m a Math major so we actually have 4 required Physics courses). I don’t know what the point of this is but, don’t be afraid of Physics guys!! (or any other subject!!) yes it’s frustrating as hell and you feel dumb for not having a clue about what is happening or how to work out the problems but I swear once it clicks for you (and it will) it’s gonna be great.

So if anyone needs a step by step (for college/uni), here’s one:

Google is your best friend, the internet has plenty of videos/papers/worked out problems for you to check out. The most important thing to look for is drawings and videos that help you visualize what’s going on. In most of general physics, the key is to see what forces are acting, and from that follows everything else.

Know your core equations. Honestly it’s always the same ones in the end.

For mechanics: you absolutely gotta know Newton’s Laws, Work and its relation to Kinetic/Potential Energy. Momentum is also important.

For thermodynamics: First and Second Law of Thermodynamics; pV = nRT, Boyle/Gay Lussac etc (note that they’re all connected), Carnot’s Cycle.

For electromagnetism: Maxwell’s equations. This is as far as I’ve gotten in my studies.

Understand where the formulas come from, rather than learning them by heart. For me, this was necessary because my memory is absolutely shit so there was no way I could remember every variation. But most of the formulas actually do make sense, and once you’ve drawn out a diagram of what’s happening, you can work them out yourself.

For the previous point, I suggest you watch and rewatch your professor’s explanation until you get the gist. Don’t get discouraged if it’s not immediately crystal clear, seek out other explanations if you need to. Then try to do it yourself.

ASK. FOR. HELP. I cannot stress this enough, do not feel ashamed about asking questions in class or during office hours. There are no stupid questions, and you’re paying thousands every year for people to teach you. Also physics is hard, so you’re pretty much expected to not understand immediately. Moreover, I can guarantee there’s at least one other person in the room with the same question who’s too afraid to ask. I was that person, and I failed the class because of it. Don’t be me.

Practice until you’re able to do most variations of standard problems. Once you’re able to do a certain problem, try to change it and see what happens. You don’t have to crunch the numbers all over again, go with your intuition first. Then you can calculate everything and see if you were correct.

This is all I’ve got at the moment. It applies to General Physics because I’m still pretty shit at Mathematical Physics (Rational Mechanics?) lmao, which is why I don’t talk about Lagrangians and such here.

If anyone has any other tips (for Mathematical Physics as well!) , please feel free to add them. Note that I’m from Italy, and this is what it was like for me. Other countries might have different ways of testing or focus on some formulas that I haven’t included. Do what works for you, obviously.

Good luck STEM students, I know it’s hard, but hopefully worth it in the long run :)

one day my bookshelves will be filled with penguin classics. one day.

I don't know what to do. I'm so lost in life I feel like I've made all the wrong decisions.

Let me ask you this: Did you get an instruction manual before you were born? Or attend a class titled 'how to live your life'? because I sure as hell didn’t — and neither did anyone else.

We live, we make mistakes, and we learn. We wander, we wonder, we make turns that don’t make sense until years later — if ever. Feeling lost is not only normal — it’s almost inevitable. There are so many paths, so many roads to take, and yet no clear map or lighthouse to guide us. So please, give yourself some grace. Be kinder with yourself.

You’ll likely never know for sure which road is 'right' or 'wrong' — and maybe that’s not the point. What's within your control is how you walk each path. What kind of person you choose to be along the way.

Try to do good. Try to be good. That's where your power lies.

✨✨✨

"Every now and then a man's mind is stretched

by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks

back to its former dimensions."

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

You wake every morning to fight the same demons that left you so tired the night before and that my love is bravery.

~ unknown 

sneak peek of my bookshelf

My aesthetic is like dark academia but the medieval Iranian / Islamic golden age version