I often wonder if I’ve made the right choices in my life. My mistakes follow me daily. I guess they have nowhere better to go. Sometimes I think I’ve chosen the wrong career for my talents. But sometimes I love what I do so much that I cannot image not doing it.
Physics has turned out to be more difficult than I originally thought. And truth be told, in most respects I’m mediocre. I teach quantum mechanics this fall, a subject I studied in depth in graduate school. quantum mechanics is the science of atoms and subatomic particles. And since the world is made of atoms, quantum mechanics is the framework on which everything we know about nature is built. For example, it explains why the Periodic Table is periodic, and why different atoms have different characteristics. Without quantum mechanics, physics and chemistry simply do not make sense.
I’m excited about teaching this subject. It’s the hardest, most fundamental, and most important branch of modern physical science. What I do in the classroom between now and April 30 will help shape the lives of every student in the room. If you’ve never taught, let me tell you the sheer magnitude of this responsibility can be overwhelming.
My dad would tell me to get my head out of my ass and just teach the class. Then he would cry and tell me that he loves me. That kind of works. Human contact can solve almost any problem. But it also helps me to remember why I love this subject. I recently found words that articulate it for me. They are from Marvin Chester’s Primer of Quantum Mechanics:
For what purpose, dear reader, do you study physics?
To use it technologically? Physics can be put to use; so can art and music. But that’s not why you study them.
It isn’t their social relevance that attracts you. The most precious things in life are the irrelevant ones. It is a meager life, indeed, that is consumed only by the relevant, by the problems of mere survival.
You study physics because you find it fascinating. You find poetry in conceptual structures. You find it romantic to understand the workings of nature. You study physics to acquire an intimacy with nature’s way.
