Featured image: Pieter Claesz Vanitas, Still Life with Books and Manuscripts and a Skull
[I wrote this online letter to Vandana Singh after reading an article of hers. Here are links to her website and her blog.
I associate the Imagine Dragons song named the same as this post with my time in 11th and 12th grade, especially with me abandoning my dreams of becoming a Physicist. Hence the title.
Oh, and by the way, don’t take me to be a sore loser by looking at this article as an angry rant or an excuse from me for not having performed well in my boards; I know I fucked up on the 12th standard front big time, and am, in no way, trying to deny that. ]
Hello Ms. Singh,
I came across an article of yours while trying to find out why my peers don’t find Physics nearly as interesting as I do.
Firstly, let me tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed it and couldn’t agree more with the reasons you’ve listed therein.
Moving on…
I now understand (to some extent) why my professing my love for Physics is always greeted with raised eyebrows.
I live in India, by the way, and it pains me to tell you that the outlook of people regarding an education in any of the pure Sciences, or anything “unconventional”, for that matter, has changed for the worse. If it’s not Engineering, Medicine, or some other main stream (pun intended), that you’re pursuing, people won’t ridicule you to your face, but they will do so inside their heads.
I chose Science over other disciplines in 11th and 12th, because I dreamt of becoming a Physicist back then. Unfortunately, those two years were nothing like I had imagined they would be. I had expected to learn real Science- how the universe works and why it works the way it does. Instead, I was taught how to solve a numerical in under 2 minutes in order to ace the JEE (that is the name of the common Indian Engineering entrance test, by the way) and how the format of my answers should be to score more in my board exam (neither of which I nailed till the very end). They forgot to teach me what I was there to learn. I was shattered. I lost interest in Chemistry and Biology.
Math and Physics, on the other hand were thankfully spared, as I had the good fortune of learning Physics for my JEE from the best Science teacher I have ever had. He believed that his subject wasn’t the kind that could be taught in a classroom- that it had to be experienced, felt. He kept the spark of curiosity alive within me.
That didn’t happen for other subjects, and as expected, I screwed up in my board exam (pardon my French). Because of my average score and the fact that there are few institutes in India where pure Sciences are taught without the expectation of rote learning from the students, I abandoned (rather, I had to abandon) the thought of becoming a Physicist. “In any case, it’s very hard to make it as one,” was a recurring comment I got from those around me. Long story short, I went for your run-of-the-mill, computers-related degree.
I can’t become a Physicist anymore, but I still plan on making it popular among the masses (using whatever skills I learn as a Computer Applications student and learning more skills, if I have to). That’s because I think it deserves the award for most loved subject, globally; because it’s beautiful, elegant, exhilarating (ugh, I’m falling short of adjectives) and most importantly, it is what makes the world go around (pun intended here as well).
The reason I’m telling you this is that your article convinced me that achieving my aim of popularizing Physics is possible… with the right kind of pedagogy; thanks a lot for that! 🙂
Regards,
Sanika Joshi
Sanika MN Joshi 
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