- #1
tiredriot
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Hi all,
I'm a newcomer to these forums and this is my first post!
I'm currently a freshman physics major, and I was hoping that I could get a little guidance from here. I'm well into my second semester and I've been enjoying most of my maths and physics classes. However, I've identified that a major source of stress for me comes from my physics laboratory work.
How it works here is that we do a new experiment every fortnight and we have to produce a 6 page lab report (along with a graded handwritten lab notebook entry) which is due two weeks after the experiment. The experiments are rather challenging as we often end up doing experiments which involve concepts that we have not yet learned formally in our lecture courses (e.g. like doing an experiment involving thin-film interference of microwaves before even touching on interference in our optics course). Hence, a lot of time is spent on reading up on the theory before/after doing the experiment and it is not uncommon for some of us (me included) to take data without understanding what is really happening.
The biggest stumbling block for me in all of this is when I actually have to sit down and write the report. I've written about 6 of them thus far over the course of this academic year (3 more to go before the semester is up) and they still give me a lot of anxiety and stress. I often have to put aside my other course work just to write the lab reports and I often have to think very hard before I begin writing each section. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that, as much as I enjoy learning physics and math, I still find writing lengthy lab reports unpleasant.
Now that I've explained my situation, I'll list my questions here..
1. Has this also been your experience for undergraduate physics lab? If so, how did you cope with it?
2. Does one get better at writing such documents/reports as the years go by? Because it's been nearly a year and I feel equally as stressed out as I was when I was writing my first lab report. I sort of aspire to work as a researcher/academic one day and I know that writing journal papers and the like would be a big part of that. Hence, my experience with writing lab reports have caused me to question whether I am really cut out for that stuff.
Hope this thread is clear! I appreciate any advice or insights that you can give me :D
I'm a newcomer to these forums and this is my first post!
I'm currently a freshman physics major, and I was hoping that I could get a little guidance from here. I'm well into my second semester and I've been enjoying most of my maths and physics classes. However, I've identified that a major source of stress for me comes from my physics laboratory work.
How it works here is that we do a new experiment every fortnight and we have to produce a 6 page lab report (along with a graded handwritten lab notebook entry) which is due two weeks after the experiment. The experiments are rather challenging as we often end up doing experiments which involve concepts that we have not yet learned formally in our lecture courses (e.g. like doing an experiment involving thin-film interference of microwaves before even touching on interference in our optics course). Hence, a lot of time is spent on reading up on the theory before/after doing the experiment and it is not uncommon for some of us (me included) to take data without understanding what is really happening.
The biggest stumbling block for me in all of this is when I actually have to sit down and write the report. I've written about 6 of them thus far over the course of this academic year (3 more to go before the semester is up) and they still give me a lot of anxiety and stress. I often have to put aside my other course work just to write the lab reports and I often have to think very hard before I begin writing each section. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that, as much as I enjoy learning physics and math, I still find writing lengthy lab reports unpleasant.
Now that I've explained my situation, I'll list my questions here..
1. Has this also been your experience for undergraduate physics lab? If so, how did you cope with it?
2. Does one get better at writing such documents/reports as the years go by? Because it's been nearly a year and I feel equally as stressed out as I was when I was writing my first lab report. I sort of aspire to work as a researcher/academic one day and I know that writing journal papers and the like would be a big part of that. Hence, my experience with writing lab reports have caused me to question whether I am really cut out for that stuff.
Hope this thread is clear! I appreciate any advice or insights that you can give me :D