Before writing anyhting, I have to admit that, I am a science PhD dropout.
Science is hard. It can't be taught easily, it can't be spoonfed. You cannot learn it by osmosis (more properly diffusion, but who cares?).
The reason taht "verbal learners" are finding it so difficult to hack it in the "hard" sciences is that these fields are INHERENTLY QUANTITATIVE. This student--and many others like him--has probably read _the Dancing Wu Li Masters_ or _the Beautiful Universe_ and came to his classes expecting that things would follow similar lines of argumentation.
The nature of the Beast (hard science) doesn't allow for this. You have to re-train the way that you conceive of things. Quantum mechanics seems coounterintuitive? Check your intuition before you reject the theory. The math works, and all the bowling-ball-on-a-trampoline analogies are of little to no use, no matter how many popscience books they show up in.
I think that the real problem is that we're not putting high schoolers through enough of a hell in their course work. As a friend of mine from Singapore once said, "the American secondary education system really gives your ego a blow job."
To Mr. Kern: good luck, man. There's no shame in leaving science if your heart isn't in it. If you didn't love it, there's no way you'd have ever been at all good at it, and that would have made you even more miserable. You're better off for having done it.
PSno one cares what your grades were in college once you get your first job, which probably won't be based on your grades anyway.
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Before writing anyhting, I have to admit that, I am a science PhD dropout. Science is hard. It can't be taught easily, it can't be spoonfed. You cannot learn it by osmosis (more properly diffusion, but who cares?). The reason taht "verbal learners" are finding it so difficult to hack it in the "hard" sciences is that these fields are INHERENTLY QUANTITATIVE. This student--and many others like him--has probably read _the Dancing Wu Li Masters_ or _the Beautiful Universe_ and came to his classes expecting that things would follow similar lines of argumentation. The nature of the Beast (hard science) doesn't allow for this. You have to re-train the way that you conceive of things. Quantum mechanics seems coounterintuitive? Check your intuition before you reject the theory. The math works, and all the bowling-ball-on-a-trampoline analogies are of little to no use, no matter how many popscience books they show up in. I think that the real problem is that we're not putting high schoolers through enough of a hell in their course work. As a friend of mine from Singapore once said, "the American secondary education system really gives your ego a blow job." To Mr. Kern: good luck, man. There's no shame in leaving science if your heart isn't in it. If you didn't love it, there's no way you'd have ever been at all good at it, and that would have made you even more miserable. You're better off for having done it. PSno one cares what your grades were in college once you get your first job, which probably won't be based on your grades anyway.