My university career should have been cooler
Let's get back in time to 2018
It's the end of June and I'm walking to school.
It's 8 in the morning and the weather is not kind at all: it's around 30°C and the sun hasn't been up in the sky for more than 2 hours; the humidity feels like you are walking inside the Amazon rainforest.
That was the very last day I walked to school as a high school student. I was going to my oral final exam. The behemoth of the "Maturità".
Finally, at school, my time comes. I go inside, I have 15 minutes for my presentation about a theme I want, not connected to anything I've studied. It is about the life and works of H. P. Lovecraft: everything goes so smoothingly well and the exam commission nods in approval.
Now the real final part begins: I get asked about Italian literature, mostly decadentism; then the English teacher asks me something from Edgar Allan Poe, to which I answer well and she's impressed.
My history and philosophy teacher asks me about nihilism and pessimism - connecting the topic to my presentation - which is not my strong suit, but I think it's good enough.
Next, the scientific subjects come. Chemistry and biology - reproductive cycle of the virus; mathematics - she asks me to solve a tricky integral with a limit; finally, it's time for the physics question.
"Please explain to me Schwartzchild's metric in General Relativity and what happens to a ray of light that goes straight into a black hole, mathematically"
With the back of my eye I see mathematics teacher, who is an external examiner from another school, freezing and stupefied. The question is about a topic not normally covered in italian high school physics classes.
I am confident, because I love the topic and hence I know the answer. My physics teacher is very pleased about my answer, and so am I.
At the end of the final, the president of the commission asks me:
"What do you plan to do at university?"
I try to contain my excitement as I speak: "Physics".
Fast forward to some years later
I wake up in my room and my mind is in pain.
Despite the lovely spring weather outside, my head hurts.
Why? Because I have to begin studying General Physics 2 and Calculus 3, from scratch, again.
I have tried to pass these two exams for more than 7 times each.
It feels impossible.
It is draining.
I start doubting myself and my life choices.
Moreover I can't clear my mind in the same way as I used to do, with a walk, because I can't go outside: it's still the middle of the pandemic...
"Just one more time, one more try, then you can go and think about more fun and exciting physics" says my mind, not a very convincing argument.
"After this you can work on that cool computational physics projects that you have to do" now, that is a very convincing one.
I get out of bed, after my morning routine I start coding this particle simulation in a magnetic field and I'm hooked. I spend days doing this particular project only, making it more and more complex. I am very satisfied. I couldn't have known at that time, but that project grants me the first - and only - 30/30 mark I will ever achieve in my university career.
Maybe I have been looking at the wrong side of physics all this time
Everything goes downwards at some point
It is last year. I'm still in front of my PC and I'm watching lines of Flutter code I'm not interested in.
It is not the bachelor in physics anymore and it's not even the same institution as before.
The lines of code are as boring to read and write as this whole Software Engineering class - alongside the operating systems, hardware architecture, OOP and computer networks ones.
There's no depth and excitement in what I'm doing, especially now that I'm close to the end of my Computer "Science" degree.
"Weren't the third year courses supposed to be the fun ones?" is the unanswered question pressing on the back of my head.
I open Discord and I begin writing a single text message in the project group chat:
"Hey guys, I'm done"
I stare at the message for a good while before sending it, because it stirs something inside of me. It is both as (un)pleasant as the truth and as true as the sky: I am done with Computer Science.
I send the message, close the project and I exhale a small sigh.
At that moment, an open article in my browser catches my attention.
It is about abstract math, programming languages and active areas of research. I sigh again and I close my fatigues eyes for a moment and in that moment I ask myself why.
Why have I never studied that stuff in this course?
I am really done with this engineer-oriented kind of Computer "Science"
I don't like at all the degree I have been doing for the last 3 years and half. It is too hands-on, shallow, uninspiring and gives you all the answers already.
The more theoretical courses teach you the absolute basics without having deep dives, while the more practical ones lose themselves in some implemention detail or require you to make projects.
Sometimes I wonder if they confused software engineering - which I have never liked - with computer science.\ Wasn't one of the points of science to do research and ask questions with unknown answers? Why was I never exposed to one of these?
When (or if) I graduate, I will have no exposure to the world of computer science research, which is something that I feel like should have at least be mentioned some time along my university career, a path full of researching professors.
It is demoralizing and uninspiring because I don't care about any of this practical stuff with no depth.
What could have been
In retrospect everything is always easier and clearer. Who knows how it would have been if I was more stubborn and I kept going on with my first choice, physics.
At the same time, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be in this emotional limbo right now. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be a programmer (or something like that), but at the same time I feel forced to swallow it and keep going.
Realistically I can't be doing anything else for a living right now and it's the least bad option.
Needless to say, I don't like this situation.
As always, thank you for reading.