PHYSICS - WILL I EVER GET IT?

A short note addressed to physics -
"Dear Physics, you are the problem. I am Sisyphus and you are my rock. Please stop being in my life!"

The reason I am fuming at having taken science for my 11th and 12th grade isn't biology or chemistry, but actually physics (aka the bane of my existence). I started studying physics in the 6th grade, and over the years, well, it's like I am still at the starting line of the race, while Physics has reached the finishing line!. I feel like if physics were a person, I’d greet them with that classic movie dialogue: “Ah, Physics, my old Nemesis!”

Few (or maybe most) may argue that perhaps my understanding of it is a little weak and so it hampers my enjoyment of the subject, but let me tell you this- I’m weak at some chapters, but I’m also quite great with a few. What bothers me isn’t the struggle to understand, but the derivations. There’s a new and complex derivation for me to learn every two pages, and they’re loaded with marks in the exam and so it’s not like I can skip them either.

But what on earth would I, a literature student, hope to achieve by knowing how the lens formula is derived? Except, maybe, understand Christopher Nolan's movies, in a better detail!

Honestly, I’m pretty sure a majority (about 80% as an estimate) of my mental energy dissipates from just looking at a derivation. I swear there’s times I started having a headache because of it. For me, it is a teenage nightmare come true; physics breakdown-inducing, confidence-degrading mean kid and I am the main character. It sucks out all the joy of my life like a little dementor. Every single time I feel happy or smart or capable, my train of thought decides that it is the best possible moment to move towards the topic of physics. Cue my brain feeling less like a brain and more like a sodden, soggy lump.

Physics as a subject is quite nice but it isn’t for me. I’ve seen the rest of my friends pursuing engineering as a career and even took a brief look at the sums asked in the MH-CET and JEE Mains. Surprise surprise, I didn’t know the heads or tails of even one sum. There were more letters than there were numbers- some of them Greek- and I didn’t know approximately a quarter of them.

I guess I’m made more for language-based subjects. Somehow, I’ve always found interpretation and analysis of literary works easier than physics, while for most of my classmates it’s the reverse. For some people I know, physics is an open book, waiting to be read. An hour’s worth of effort is all it takes for them to understand the concepts of radiation or electricity or optics. Then there’s me, with my word-tuned brain, for whom it takes at least a day to learn a chapter. I can read books and read the people who wrote them through the pages but I can’t learn the application of an electric field when observed from an equatorial point of a dipole. For me, physics is like one of those annoying, unavoidable aunts at a family gathering who keeps trying to ask you about how your studies are going. You just have to power through with people like that.

I’m already bursting with anticipation for my 12th board exams, waiting for them to get over so that I can finally live a physics-free life (in my opinion, physics and stress are synonymous). So much so, that I’ve got a whole bucket list of things to do! If it weren’t for physics, I’d be a much happier person right now, but well, what can you do? I’m just happy it’ll all be over in a few months.