Finally..AY10/11 Sem 1 is over

My QM I, II and III "guardians". (1927, Solvay Conference)

http://regnirts.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

(Taking a very deep breath and sigh...)

Well, AY10/11 Sem 1 is over and I have just finished the final exam of PC2131 (E and M) 1 hour ago and PC4130 QMIII 5 hours ago. It was really fast and so does this semester.

While writhing this post, I am happy and sad. Happy, because I have finally completed the most important courses for this undergraduate study: Quantum Mechanics I, II and III. Seriously, I consider myself has graduated as physics graduate because, in my point of view, QM is the most important training that I must complete and QM is far more important than the rest of the module like E and M, Classical Mechanics, Mathematical method etc. I cannot imagine myself graduate without QM I, II and III. Why QM is so important to me? Well, honestly, it is a matter of pride as well as because it is very cool, interesting ( I still cannot accept Schrodinger's Cat and quantum entanglement) and yet to be fully understand by human being. Pride, you say? What pride? Well, just like the old good Chinese proverb says (translate by me): It is better to have a very sharp knife (only one) than having a lot of "normal" knife. As you may aware, I am pretty weak in physics (in fact very weak) and I really cannot give up my pride and just let people think that I am "nobody". Now, with these three QM modules under my belt, at least, I think, I am "somebody" because not much people can "stand" QM very long and very often people just switch their mind off when they heard someone talking about QM. On the other hand, seriously, I have think this over and over again: is this a correct attitude and mindset towards learning? I seriously don't know. Is it correct to think yourself as "somebody" and put your pride as high as your nose? My faith is shaking because this is really heavy and very often I have consider giving up and live my life an enjoyable one. No stress, just study whatever that is easy and able to graduate. You may confuse now and think that QM I, II and III are core module and compulsory to go through. As the matter of fact, only QM I and QM II are core and compulsory for normal degree undergraduate. QM III will only become core and compulsory for those are taking Honors degree. In my case, I am most probably graduate without Honors simply because of my poor and lousy CAP (a measure of overall performance) and it is up to me to choose to study QM III or not. So what the big deal since a lot of honors students are also "equip" with QM III? Well, the big deal is that I am the only non-honors student who dare to compete with the honors student in this "sounds difficult" subject! I must admit that it is really disputable and up to individual's point of view to think "I'm daring or not", but seriously it is really extremely rare to find a student like me who dare to do this and most of my senior who graduate without honors would have no QM III in their transcript.

Well, let's get back to the initial "discussion" now: Am I right to lift my pride as high as my nose but yet get myself very tired and sad very often? Tired and sad because physics is just not my field and my knowledge of physics is very fragile. I can easily forget what I have learnt over night and repeat all the mistake again and again during mid term test, final exam and even tutorial sessions.

On the other hand, it may be true to think that life is about a battle. In that sense, maybe I am right and I should continue this "battle" of challenging myself and hopefully it would lead me to somewhere better. If it eventually lead me to somewhere worse and stuck in a one way street (undergraduate degree is one of the most important factor that determine my career and it may have a huge ill-effect if i have selected it wrongly), well, I may as well just take it as another battle.

Maybe I just shouldn't take it too seriously and think too much about it because, better or worse, I will learn and grow and eventually nothing to lose. So what if people laugh at me and think that I am not realistic (keep doing something that you are not good at ) and deserve a failure? Well, I guess I have to just let them laugh but tell myself that at least I have tried my best to earn myself a pride.

Who knows? Maybe life without pride would be the worst failure after all...

(to be continued...)