AP Physics Personal Statement

I began teaching as a graduate teaching assistant and project assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a teaching assistant, I conducted labs, discussion sessions, and some honor sessions for introductory physics courses in electromagnetism, thermal dynamics, optics, and modern physics. As a project assistant, my responsibilities included grading homework, discussing it with students, and prepare some homework solutions in quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and an introductory physics course. In teaching physics, my main goal is to have my students actively thinking like physicists. I believe that the ability to think like a physicist is valuable to everyone, whether physics graduates, physics majors or non-physics majors.

Since Year 7, I have found myself to be naturally able and passionate towards mathematics and I maintained excellent grades throughout high school. Despite my enjoyment of mathematics and the satisfaction I get from solving problems, I always asked myself how these laws were helpful in the world and I found more answers when I turned to physics and saw my mathematical skills being used to practical effect. I realised just how immersed I was becoming in physics when whilst enjoying theme park rides, I started to examine the physics behind the rides and mentally solved calculations to figure out the force being used to meet the velocities in the record times they claimed. From this point I dived into physics and knew I wanted to study it

Physics is involved in all of our daily activities. Most of the time, however, physics is overlooked and never acknowledged. It is important to understand different aspects of physics because physics tells us how and why certain events occur. By definition, physics is the search for laws that describe the most fundamental aspects of nature: matter, energy, force, motion, heat, light, and other phenomena. There are many different sectors of physics, but we will be focusing primarily on mechanical physics. Each step of the field goal kicking process involves physics, which we will explain.

Living organisms contain molecular and cellular machinery that maintain homeostasis. All of this machinery is governed by the laws of Physics and Chemistry and with our increased understanding of the biological sciences we understand the complex relationship of all three of these sciences in living systems. Each science is inherently dependent on another: Biology Chemistry Physics Mathematics.

On a two-hour bus ride to a small, rural town in New Zealand with my school, we passed by numerous beautiful rolling hills and forests. While my classmates chatted, listened to music, and watched the landscape, I kept my eyes focused downward on my AP Physics binder. It was the summer before senior year, and instead of fully enjoying the month-long community service trip to a foreign country, I also focused on self-studying AP Physics 1 and 2. Because my school requires a prerequisite physics class before enrolling in AP Physics C, I had to learn an entire year’s worth of material over the summer. At the end of my Junior year when I was contemplating taking the harder physics class, one of the physics teachers told me, “No one has jumped straight into Physics C in many years, but I think you can do it.”

In the beginning of my junior year, I had signed up for one of the most intimidating classes in my high school, AP chemistry. While I took chemistry honors, I heard rumors about the AP course and seen homework packets that overwhelmed me to the point of removing the class from next year’s schedule. However, out of impulsiveness, I decided it was time for a challenge and put the course back on my schedule. When I received my summer assignment for the course, I felt confused and regretful about the decision I had made. My commitment to not fail the class the first week back from break forced me to focus on the time-consuming homework. From my struggle, I managed to finish the packet on time. The school year began, and one of the first lessons

Writing is taken for granted nowadays. Thus, people don't take in consideration how lucky they are to be able to read and write. I can still vividly remember how when I was very young I used to get extremely angry for not being able to read the newspaper that my grandfather used to carry around. For that reason, there is a lot of importance to reading and writing, and I'm glad that throughout this year I was able to grow as a writer.

I started my junior year and I was initially surprised on how easy the courses were. Because of this, I got extremely cocky. I started to belittle everyone and deemed I was the greatest in academics. I called this my “god-complex” phase. Since my school only offered one science-related AP class, I went with that, which was AP Physics 1. I started feeling confident that I’ll be able to ace this class easily like my other courses. Only two weeks after I joined and I was literally crying about how hard it was.

During my sophomore year at my high school, Black River, I took three AP classes and two courses at the local liberal arts college, Hope College. Since the year proceeded smoothly - I got a 5 on each AP exam, received a 4 on the AP Physics C exam for which I self-studied, and completed all the classes required for a minor in mathematics by Hope College - I decided to challenge myself the following year by taking six courses at Hope College and one AP class.

I had thoroughly enjoyed and was quite proficient at the Honors Chemistry course my sophomore year, so I was ecstatic to delve deeper into the subject. I had heard that the class was one of the most difficult classes a student could take, but I was not deterred by these warnings. The first couple of weeks, I thought I was grasping the material quite well. The first test of the year was administered, and when we received the tests back, I was utterly confounded to see that I had made the first failing grade of my entire academic career. Many students dropped out of Advanced Placement Chemistry by the first month, but I was determined to see it through to the end. I carefully and thoughtfully completed homework assignments, study guides, and any extra-credit opportunities in order to succeed. Despite many of my peers telling me dropping out was the best decision they had made, I still sought out assistance from my teacher as well as other resources to overcome obstacles that were challenging me. I embraced the rigors the class presented, and knew it was going to be the most difficult out of them all, but it was also going to be the most rewarding in the end. I finished the year with an incredibly strong semester grade, as well as an above average AP exam score. This enlightening experience instilled in me not only my grit and tenacity

As I progressed through my education, my habits slowly improved, eventually earning myself mediocre grades in mathematics and the sciences, which unbeknownst to past me, were heavily mathematically based. By the end of junior year I began to realize the true importance of everything I learned, despite it's perceived relevance at the time. The peak of my efforts culminated in a otherwise fairly average achievement -- a 3 on the AP Physics exam. To some, perhaps even a disappointment -- to me, the smart alec who's eyes were forced wide open to a world that is not forgiving to the lazy, it meant everything. The concepts and mathematics of Physics relied heavily on both knowledge and application of algebra, calculus, and geometrical ideas -- subjects I subjected myself to struggle in. In an attempt to prove to myself that I had the knowledge and mastery of these ideas, a course that was designed to incorporate them all was a true litmus test of my abilities and how far they had progressed to earn myself something only I may be proud

I thought that I probably would qualify for AP Physics 1 because my grades in math and in science seemed to be very high and that was one of the components to the AP recommendation. Also, the math “quiz” that was given in class seemed very easy to me which was also a component of the course placement. Being recommended for AP Physics 1 is very exciting for me because I like math and I know that physics is a lot of math. In addition to being excited, I am very eager to get to the first class to see how difficult it is and I am up for the challenge. The labs that we have done this year I thought were very interesting and I enjoyed them, but they would have been better if they were a bit more difficult. For me, memorizing facts is definitely my

Throughout all my years of education in elementary, math was the subject I hated the most, but now that I got older I realized that this subject has started to grow on me. Not until like about the 7th grade was it that I realized that math is really useful in life and I also realized that I wasn’t bad at math. The reason math interests me is because I like a challenge, if I don’t understand an equation I try to find out the steps myself and try to break down the steps in the equation in order to comprehend the problems. By doing this I ended up improving my analyzing skills. Because of my interest in math I gained an interest in the field of engineering. I looked further into the field of engineering by shadowing a mechanical engineer. I reached

AP Physics was undoubtedly my favorite subject, so much so that even having one of the worst learning environment couldn’t stray my interest from this field. I believe in a learning environment where both teacher and the student has a key responsibility to care and show effort.

Life is just like the ocean, whatever choice you make as a steersman, you must be well aware of your favorite, that is, it is worthy of pursuing in your whole lifetime. My high school physics teacher influenced me a lot in life choices. First of all, I have cultivated great interest in physics from junior high school. It has been my most favorite subject. As a result, my physics grades have been the best among my batch. During my high school studies, I took part in the High School Student’s Olympic Competition of mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry. I won the third prize of provincial level for biology and chemistry, and the second prize of municipal level for physics. While during the learning process of undergraduate courses, I gradually cultivated a strong interest