What do physics majors do after graduation?
By Christopher Mertin, BS '14
The reason I got into Physics is because of my high school physics teacher. Her name is Ms. Hodgkinson and she holds a master's in Physics. Back then, I hardly knew what Physics was, but she inspired me to study in the field. In fact, I remember her showing us Schrödinger's Equation, and even though we had no idea what a differential equation was, she was able to explain the idea of the equation in a way we could understand. I also distinctly remember us going over basic quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, which is what truly grabbed my interest and made me apply, and attend, Florida State University in Fall 2010.
It was her teachings that had me gravitate to want to study Nuclear Physics, even though I knew almost nothing about it at the time. When researching schools, I learned that Florida State was actually one of the top schools in the US for Nuclear Physics, hoping that I would be able to do some research in the field as an undergrad.
As it turns out, the professors at FSU have a lot of enthusiasm when it comes to getting undergrad students involved in research and do it in such a way that even though you barely know anything, they explain things to you and you learn quite a bit. In fact, the most enjoyable things that I learned were things in the lab instead of in the classroom. In the beginning, I was tasked with (now) trivial things as calibrating gamma ray detectors with Dr. Wiedenhöver, to modeling the magnetic field of a superconducting solenoid with him for my senior thesis, to publishing a few actual Nuclear Physics paper with Dr. Kemper on reactions important in stellar nucleosynthesis. On top of all this, there's not much that can compare to being one of the few undergrads running the accelerator alongside grad students.
Over my years at FSU my aspirations changed to what I really wanted to do. My interest was initially Nuclear Physics coming in, but my research had me writing and learning quite a bit about code and the visualization of data, which drew my interests towards Scientific Computing, as you can quite literally create your own universe before your eyes. As of now, I am attending the University of Utah to pursue a PhD in Scientific Computing, which will not only prepare me for modeling real world applications and allow me to go back into Physics if I want, but also where professors have told me `I really feel that Physics students are the best students. Even better than those who come from Math.'
Studying Physics is a grueling task and lead to many late nights finishing up homework and working on projects. However, in the end, I feel that my path of studying Physics at Florida State University was the right choice and not only did I learn a lot, and meet great people, but it taught me how the universe works on a fundamental level. Something that can't be accomplished with any other major.
One last piece of advice from Christopher: Read the book! Even though professors showed us messages from former students telling us that we should read the textbooks, I still ignored it and didn't actually read any of the books I had for classes until my last semester in Dr. Roberts E&M II course. RTFB if you want A's instead of B's.