Why do I want to choose Physics as my major

There is an astrophysicist. Every time he is
asked “what do you do?” by the person sitting next to him in a plane, he
responds “I’m an astronomer” if he feels like talking. If he doesn’t want to be
disturbed, he will answer: “I’m a physicist.”
During the recess week, a lot of my friends
asked me “what are you planning on majoring in”. I answered them “Physics”.
Most of them couldn’t hold the surprise on their faces and said “Are you
crazy?” “Why would you do that?” “What will you do with a physics degree?” Many
people may think physics is boring and abstract. This makes them have a
negative attitude toward Physics. However, I have some special reasons to
choose physics.
First, I love Physics definitely. It teaches me
to understand how things work, the reasons that things happen the way they do,
which requires the ability to analyse problems. It’s not the matter of
knowledge, but the matter of how to think. In NUS, engineering students study
parts of Physics only in a week, but Physics students have to spend two months.
As a result, engineering students only know how to use the formulae but don’t
know where they are from. A physicist got a banking job in the United State
with his physics PHD. He asked his employer why he was chosen. His employer
simply said: “we need people who can really think and solve frontiers problems,
not people who can only use application of some formulae.” Believe it or not, an undergraduate degree in
physics tells prospective employers this person has what it takes to succeed.
The Times also suggested that Physics was in fact the most employable of
degrees.
I always want to try something in different
fields during different period of my life. The skill in Physics is highly marketable
and it is applicable to a wide range of careers. Physicists go on to fields
like medicine, finance, marketing, music&TV, engineering, often quite
successfully. The connections between Physics and these fields are explained
below.
Medicine: Surgery is now carried out
using lasers. Our body are imaged using X-rays, ultrasound, NMR(nuclear
magnetic resonance). And, there are some new techniques, such as using nanobots
to target individual cancer cell or using infrared light to monitor our blood.
Finance: in finance, it is a
physicist’s ability to model complex systems which is particularly important.
Billions of pounds rest on predicting the future behaviour of global markets.
Marketing: you can watch the speech
“What physics taught me about marketing” on TED given by Dan Cobley who is the
marketing director at Google.
Music&TV: Whether you want to be
in front of the camera or work behind the scenes, understanding physics is
useful for many careers in television and music. From the sound engineer who
controls the mix at a music concert to the special effects technician working
on the latest action movie, many of the people that work in the media industry
need physics know-how.
To tell the truth, what I said before will be
accepted by most western countries especially America
but maybe not by Singapore
or China.
However, there are many Singaporean students having education in western
countries every year. Nobody knows what will happen in the next four years. I
still want to have a try. Learn Physics to open my eyes, open my mind, open
doors to my future, and really make some differences.