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Volume CXXXIII, Number 3 |
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Pre-meds: value your physics
IAN
MORRISON
COLUMNIST
With the beginning of another semester comes the usual pained expressions around campus, the result of the usual personal ills: the pain of gaining weight at unprecedented speed, the pain of being that kid who lost his jacket and has to send an email to the digest (don't be that kid), and the pain of realizing that your mind still isn't what it didn't used to be. Above all of these ills, however, is the pain of being a pre-med and having to make that long trudge to Searles 315 to do your time in introductory physics.
At least it's worth it. I am not a pre-med, but as the son of a son of a doctor and someone whose name starts with a vowel, I feel uniquely qualified to make fun of pre-meds in public documents. Let me offer the story of my most recent visit to my doctor. I hadn't been to the doctor in quite a while, and though I didn't feel that anything was seriously wrong with me, I wanted to get some minor things checked out. I'll admit, for example, that sometimes I feel like my chi-squared is a little, well, small. More than one standard deviation from the mean, if you will. I had this dark hairy spot on my back, which I feared was a developing black hole. I had also been having problems with other aspects of my life. I felt that whenever someone acted on me I would react upon them, almost equally so. Sooo, I thought it was time to visit my doctor.
Golly, I'm glad I went in for a check-up. After a little small talk and the usual assortment of tests (weight, height, water-displacement, Planar Tunneling Spectroscopy, etc.), the door closed and the check-up proper began. You know, once the exam room door closes, a doctor becomes a real craftsman: one-on-one with your doc, the gloves come off (not really - this is when they snap on) and you have the chance to see a real physician at work. On command, I turned around and showed him my suspicious black hole. After just a moment of inspection, my doctor informed me that there was no need to worry about it; black holes have no hair. Whatever heinous thing was on my back was just some gross icky thing. With hair. Next, he examined my chi-squared while I turned my head and coughed. When I raised the issue of my action/reaction behavior, he informed me that such behavior was pretty fundamental. We talked about how I feel uncertainty: sometimes I act like I'm one thing, and other times I act like I'm something else altogether. He prescribed a Fourier analysis, signed some forms with what looked like a force diagram of a rope-and-pulley, and sent me on my way. All in all, I would say I left feeling in peak physical condition.
Without an intimate knowledge of physics a doctor could do nothing. I mean, what do you talk to your doctor about?
What I don't understand is what all you pre-meds spend your time doing besides physics. Moan and groan all you want, physics sure is better than other subjects. At least it's not a social science: social sciences, like tattoos, are mistakes that scar you for life. Any run-in with these is usually the result of a bet gone awry or peer pressure from a friend who has had one too many.
So remember how important introductory physics is to your future the
next time you sit down at eleven-thirty on a Tuesday night with that problem
set still crisp and untouched (indeed even slightly dusty from a week
of rest under your bed). As you do your multiplications and derivations,
your integrations and dividerations, think: I am learning the skills I
will use every day in my profession. The next time you sit in class attempting
not to make contact with the glass-rimmed eyes of your physics professor
- because a physics professor not wearing glasses is a physics professor
who has misplaced his glasses - remember: it's worth it.
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