Not In University Yet But Not Only The Tips Are Useful On Itself - Tumblr Posts

hihi you started uni at 16?? woah that’s so cool!! how did you even do that??

anyway that’s not rlly the point of my ask. given the fact that you want to become an astrophysicist or quantum physicist (that’s so cool btw) I’m assuming you’re good at it, so do you have any tips for studying physics, getting good marks in phy exams etc? bc I’m in tenth grade rn and phy is my weakest subject

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Hi! Honestly I just applied a year earlier than most (it's legal in my country, but uncommon), and I was lucky enough to get in! And my birthday just falls so that I'm one of the younger people in my year, although not the youngest.

I'm sorry about how long this answer took, I really wanted to take my time to give you a proper answer, so here is a few tips from my personal experience:

Practice Questions! I'm sure you hear this one a lot, but people really underestimate how different studying mathematical subjects is to most other ones. You can't just memories question types or make fun flashcards (although that's something you can do, you just cant do it on its own). You need to be practicing questions, whether its from textbooks, or ideally past papers. The main reason for this is you have to be able to sit and a look a question and figure out what to do with it. It's not always easy and clearcut and you will probably struggle a lot at first. It's important to be resilient and not let this discourage you, remember you learn the most from making mistakes. I promise you, the more you practice, the more you will be able to make those daunting first steps.

Prioritize your time. What I like to do is start with what topic as a whole I'm worst at (usually quantum physics), and look at all of the questions I can find on that. Then, if I think i can do a type of question correctly consistently, I'll maybe only do one of those, or skip entirely depending on time constraints. If I think I can do a type of question correctly, but only sometimes, I'll pick out 3-8 of those depending on the lengths, and work through them, making sure I understand why I'm doing everything. If I think i cannot do a type of question at all, I will read over the theory, watch some videos on it, and then practice questions until I think I can do it correctly at least sometimes.

Try to link different topics together. This is probably what I struggle the most with (bc it isn't always easy). If an equation is used in two separate topics, try to really think about why it works in both applications. This will help you understand what the equation really does and how you can apply it in your questions.

These are some pretty general pointers to help you get started (i hope its not too repetitive from what you've heard before, and i hope i can help at least someone out there!