It was truly a splendid academic experience... wandering the very halls where the "Pound-Rebka experiment" took place or meeting Professor Shapiro himself of the "Shapiro Time Delay". In high school, I had read about these famous efforts that verified Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Why did I end up studying in one of the top undergraduate physics programs in the world? What did I get out of Harvard Physics? That's what this piece explores...
Maybe I am easily bored, or maybe variety truly is "the spice of life". Knowing my interests and aptitudes though, I sought an interdisciplinary education. Traditionally in 20th century American elite education, this would beckon a liberal arts degree. But in the 21st century, I felt the environment required an adapted approach, a so-called "Liberal Science" degree.
I aimed to develop a liberal science foundation with strong quantitative skills and a scientific way of thinking, supplemented by inspiration from the social sciences. I thought subjects like physics and engineering would equip me with quantitative tools to solve problems. Meanwhile subjects like economics and government would grant me a compass to identify them. Humanities still have significant importance and I expect such pursuit to continue. I surmised the order of sciences in university and humanities later in life would be more manageable than vice versa. I strongly believed in Vinod Khosla's argument for "liberal science", have kept up with The Economist nearly every day the last few years, and hoped that this approach would pay the most dividends years from now.
Although secondary, employability was always in the back of my mind. I was confident that a physics degree would signal to employers that I am at least somewhat intelligent, capable and hardworking. And beyond the obvious academia, lab, and occasional quantitative finance careers, physics does appear often enough in various job descriptions. I do want to mention that this indirect method is superfluously HARD. Frankly I would have been less inclined to risk it if I weren't in the privileged position of being backed by Harvard Physics' brand.
Like any inquisitive young adult or budding university student, I wanted to understand the world around me. I became obsessed with why things were they way they were and took on a quest to understand what this universe is. Every academic subject answers a subset of this question, but in my mind this Sisyphean task was best explored by physics or philosophy. I was perhaps first enchanted by this eclectic choice from the Galt, D'Anconia, Ragnar trio in Atlas Shrugged. Physics seemed to me the most fundamental in examining the natural world. It was the science sporting the least gaps in logic or assumptions.
There were plenty of other reasons, like the tightknit yet preeminent size of the department of around 50 undergraduates, and the oh-so-sexy, custom Harvard Physics jackets. But these were the most salient in my recollection of my 18-year-old self.
So what did I learn? There was quite the breadth of classes from Electricity & Magnetism to building some Robotics. There was certainly depth with Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computing. The specific content of equations and graphs can be referenced in textbooks, but more impactful were the frameworks I added to my life.
The first framework would be to think with paradigm shifts. Despite thinking that physics had the least gaps of knowledge, I kept finding that our understanding of the world is a never-ending process of revisions. Repeatedly the foremost scientists thought their leading models of the universe were irrefutable. But then they were again replaced by something with greater accuracy—a new paradigm, like the geocentric to the heliocentric or the Newtonian to the Einsteinian. I engaged more with the spirit of the scientific method—that there is no "truth", just "not false... yet". This concept chips away hubris, and thus I became more open-minded towards viewpoints.
The paradigm that I operate on is very probabilistic. The world is not as black and white anymore, and nothing guarantees complete certainty. I started to see that any outcome is possible. We can attribute different weights and keep conditioning on more information, Bayesian style (shout out soulful Stat110). The absolute maddening extension from physics was that we discovered even our location is probabilistic. You are not 100% CERTAINLY existing on just your chair right now. You technically exist in Sarasota, Florida and Shenzhen, China too (albeit infinitesimally). You don't believe it? I almost don't too...
Physics heavily encourages reasoning from first principles. We always condensed our description of the situation to the most fundamental and relevant concepts. Then we worked from there to solve complicated problems and generate interesting analysis. This throws away irrelevant distractions, encourages innovation of more "zero to ones" and feels quite transferable. Heck I feel like this even helped me replace a burner on a stove last week because I could reason out how the switches and wires work without a manual.
The most unexpected change in beliefs from studying physics was that I became more spiritual and closer to believing in a divine creator than ever before. All these phenomena demonstrated to me how beautiful the universe is. It seemed it took "fine-tuning" for everything to so nicely equilibrate. The constants that kept reappearing seemed too coincidental and I developed a hunch that everything was designed. Despite delving into the method of our most "fundamental" examination of the natural world, it still seemed all too arbitrary. Usually the impression of science is that it weakens faith, but for me it strengthened it.
Finally, I want to thank my professors and classmates. The professors surely did their amazing work, like cutting-edge research or writing the textbooks. But they also went the extra mile in creating a healthy community; still one of my favorite memories at Harvard was the lovely dinner at Professor Mazur's house! And of course I give huge thanks to the friends I made during the desolate 2am psets or for jolly times acting a fool during lab. And yes, the legendary 15c physics party will never be forgotten! This article was not comprehensive, but I tried to cover as much as reasonable. It definitely was a great experience and I'll see how I utilize the gift of this higher education throughout my career.