Recently, I had a nice discussion with a colleague about the mindset of undergraduate physics freshmen (i.e., first-year) students. This conversation has inspired today's blogpost on the very same topic.
Many things are different at a university as compared to high schools. Physics students oftentimes feel overwhelmed during their first semesters at college. Professors are rushing through the course material, homework is due every week in multiple classes, and a major part of the fellow students appear to be geniuses. They seem to grasp even complex contents very quickly, do not need to spend much time on their homework and ask a lot of smart questions during the lectures. One might get the impression that they do not need to work hard to pass exams and achieve their goals. These are only a few examples of the mindset that many students tend to develop. I would like to argue that such thoughts are largely unfounded and are making life unnecessarily harder for many students.