Mediocre Physicists

Physics graduates are mostly mediocre, here is why and how to recover:

I want to preface this by emphasizing that educational institutions are heavily responsible for this mediocracy, however, you are a grown person now and you are responsible for your own lacking. This article by no means a bully, consider it as a wake up call to do better.

The myth of “No Jobs for Physics Graduate”!

Let me start by saying, this is entirely and literally a skill issue. Excluding academia, which has a clear metric if you want to join: “Very High GPA”, the industry is hungry for sharp physicists. The problem is that most physics graduate either have no idea about what good are they for, doesn’t have a clear interest in industry, are not informed about required skillset, or they are just bad students who entered physics by a poor process of elimination and stuck with it.

You must set yourself apart from others, the bare minimum is not good enough. Find something that interests you and git gud at it, if not then learn how to code; it’s unique enough.

I aim to enlighten thee about thy possible sources of lacking. Thou art bound to remedy them in thine own way.

Physics is the most fundamental science of natural sciences, and should be handled in due fundamentality.

Physics is fundamental, it deals with the intricate fundamentals of realities. Hence, a lot of foundational knowledge must be built with care, half-ass-ing your way through the important foundational physics courses: Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Electrodynamics, Statistical Mechanics, will backfire fatally. You, by no means, can learn these courses without reading their relevant materials.

I was shocked to learn that most physics graduates have never opened textbooks. They learn from their teachers’ notes and SLIDES. Quite shocking to say the least. If you half-ass your way through foundational courses like this, you may still get good grades, but you will fail miserably at anything beyond the scope of the very little you were given in these notes & slides. You failed to learn the very important skill of how to study and survey resources (textbooks). You will be missing foundational skills to learn and research. What did you gain from your degree then?

Another aspect of losing the foundationality of physics, is to waste your undergraduate degree learning very niche topics. If you plan to be a decent physicist, with the proper transferrable skills, you must build your foundations very rigorously. Physics teaches you a lot of important skills that can be useful to any discipline. From specific technical knowledge, to broad data analysis and problem solving skills. By construction, physicists are great problem solvers, they are trained to dismantle problems into their abstract concepts, and derive solutions from first principles. Such training can be easily missed if one doesn’t care during their B.Sc.

Physics is everywhere!

To escape mediocrity, you must realize that physics is everywhere, not in the buzzwords sense: “yay physics is everywhere yay”, but realizing that every natural science & engineering discipline is filled with physics. You may lack the technical skills for these disciplines, but you have enough grounds to build yourself specializing in them. This adaptability heavily relies on your ability to survey resources, until you develop that ability, you won’t be able to adapt easily in any discipline.

Another indispensable skill is the ability to do research, not necessarily publishable one, but a due diligence one. Your whole degree is about telling you the stories of previous scientists and their successful research. You have a head-start compared to non-physicists when it comes to research skills, which is very important in every engineering field, it’s usually labeled as R&D: Research and Development.

Take away points: Learn how to read physics resources, whether textbooks or technical papers; learn how physics enables you to be adaptable; finally, learn that your most indispensable skill is your ability to do research.

Don’t be motivated by buzzwords…

Nature is beautiful, and it is quite hard to overlook its beauty, especially for physicist. Learning about the intricate underlying mechanisms of nature is truly rewarding. However, here comes the slippery slope: sometimes you will be lured into chasing these beauties you will stray away from understanding it well. This sometimes trick commoners into liking buzzwords-filled bs about some topics, like quantum computing, or nanotechnology. Sure, these topics are beautiful, but they are filled with hopes and dreams of misinformed commoners and fraudulent mediocre scientists. Be rigorous, do not sell bullshit, and be concise.

Astronomy……..

Man, I hate astronomy, and I cannot stand anyone who falls in love with it. Almost all of astronomy lovers are mediocre physicists, it’s an insult to physics that they claim to belong to it. Everything wrong with physics is exemplified in them: lack of rigor, bullshit mediocre skills, fantasizing about buzzwords, lack of sense of reality. Astro-enthusiasts are such a shame to physics, and they represent more than a few of physics graduates. If you are an astro-enthusiast, you are doomed unless you reflect real hard on yourself. You can do better, you can escape the mediocracy.

I graduated a mediocre, now what?

If you feel like a mediocre physicist, fret not, it’s never too late. Start by rebuilding and refining your foundational knowledge. Pick up mathematics textbooks to review all of Calculus, then start with John Taylor’s classical mechanics, then study vector calculus, then study Griffiths’ electrodynamics and quantum mechanics. After that you just gotta git gud.

Final remarks.

Do not be bullied by my words, you are stronger than this! I hope you now know how important you are to society, and how far can you reach if you work on yourself properly. I wish you all the best, and I hope this yapping inspired you to be better. After all this is the end goal here.

Here are your memes of the post:

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Thanks for attending my PiTalk, cya!

P.S. I might start a mailing list and/or a physics riddle in every post, idk let me know what do you think here.