Yeah, I remember the point in high school physics where the teacher patiently explained that *every* explanatory model we were learning was a polite, noble lie and that the truth was a ton of math. And then I took AP Physics and learned math is *very hard.*
Good lord. I remember what that was like in my AP Physics class. So much math, and so much of it I barely understood at all. Frankly, I still have no idea how I managed to pass that class.
Yep. I did 2 years of undergraduate physics and left for the field of pure mathematics, which I found less confusing (I may be unusual in this respect).
I entered college thinking I might do physics, took two courses where the math was difficult to follow, and ended up graduating with a math degree with a focus on theory, discrete math, and computing algorithms, all of which I find *way easier* than the applied stuff in physics.
I stuck with undergrad physics for two whole years before I bailed and switched to computer science, which is SO MUCH EASIER.
I also have a degree in computer science but I didn't think that worth mentioning here because it was easier than the math degree 😆.
That is true...up to a point. The "Shut Up and Calculate" turn in physics has not ultimately been a positive one. It's remarkable how often fairly advanced grad students are completely incapable of articulating conceptually the physical processes represented by the equations. They have the math...
...skills to do them and the pattern recognition skills to know when to use one or another, but they're at a loss to explain *what is going on.* And this has bled into the published scholarship, where increasingly esoteric mathematical conjectures are put forward with no real empirical evidence.