XPost: sci.physics, soc.college.admissions   
   From: nobody@mixmaster.it   
      
   Ill have to start out with some of my history for this to make any   
   sense at all.   
      
   A little over 3 years ago, in my sophomore year of high school, I   
   decided to start educating myself again.  My background up to that   
   point consisted primarily of mathematics up through differential and   
   integral calculus, and a bunch of recreational programming experience   
   in Basic, and recently at that point, C.  This was, of course, not   
   learned in school.  My father had been teaching me math from an early   
   age, and I had read about it and done recreational stuff with it while   
   grade school was going on.  Attempts to get the public school system   
   to help with it were tried, but to little avail.  I had been skipped   
   ahead before, but didnt learn much more than I was learning previously   
   and had problems with the workload.   
      
   Anyway, it was about that time that I started reading the Feynman   
   Lectures on Physics.  My previous background with physics pretty much   
   consisted of qualitative high-school level stuff, along with a few   
   basics -- Newtons Laws, the law of gravitation, Coulombs Law, and   
   conservation of energy and momentum.  I was startled to find out how   
   much I didnt know.   
      
   After a while, I finished off the Feynman Lectures, and wasnt quite   
   sure what to do next.  I ended up studying mostly chemistry, which   
   suddenly made a lot more sense with some knowledge of basic quantum   
   mechanics.  I also checked out some stuff on general relativity and   
   quantum field theory, the latter of which I am still struggling with   
   today, but definitely making progress.  I also struggled for a long   
   time trying to grapple with the measurement problem, with brought me   
   into contact with some information theory.  Needless to say, I am still   
   not comfortable with that today, either.   
      
   In the meantime, I churned through high school and hated it.  But I did   
   my work, which was more than enough in the small, rural, underfunded   
   high school I was attending.  I graduated with a GPA of 3.98, an SAT   
   score of 1600, and an ACT score of 35.  I took all the AP tests in   
   calculus, physics, and chemistry, and got a five (the top score) on all   
   of them.   
      
   I wound up only applying to a state university, mainly because I was   
   getting tuition free, because of pressure from my mother, and because   
   I never really had any idea what I wanted to do anyway.   
      
   So far, I have been in college for a semester and change, and other   
   than the increase in personal freedom, Im finding it too much like   
   high school.  I took multivariate calculus and the second semester of   
   introductory calculus-based physics and didnt learn one damn thing.   
   Most of my complaints were met with incredulity, and I didnt push it   
   very hard.  I ground through as I always have, and my GPA from last   
   semester was a 4.0.   
      
   But its another semester, and Im still not learning anything in   
   classes, and Im pretty sure that Im horribly wasting my time.  Can   
   anyone advise me on what to do to put a stop to this madness?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)