This is a story of how I got through 5 years worth of learning physics...

Or, well... how I got through 5 years worth of college.

When I was in high school, my classmates literally just predicted what I would end up on becoming. 

Some said I would be an architect because I did well on my drafting and AutoCAD classes. Others would say I would be a professional artist because I was in the Art Club, or that I would be a journalist because I was the school paper editor. Sometimes they'd tell me I'd probably end up being the writer for some prime time show on these huge networks, just because I used to write for the school's plays. 

They even guessed I would probably do well in college.

No one ever predicted that I would end up attending this well-known university (that made my life extra-hell) and taking up a hard science degree program. 

Isn't applied physics some form of engineering?

When I was fifteen, my big sister @arrliinn talked me into taking the entrance exam to this big university. (Basic education in the Philippines was 10 years, so I started college at 16.) I did take it, without even hoping to pass because it was so well-known that this entrance exam was apparently very difficult and, rumors had it, was basically right minus wrong.

I passed. I didn't get into the program I wanted, but I still ended up as eligible for enrollment... I just had to choose another degree program.

I didn't know why, but I chose BS Applied Physics. (Sounded so cool, anyway.) Maybe because I really liked high school physics? And I thought it was just some form of engineering. (It isn't.)

Here is a list of things that could go wrong.

• Get lost in the gigantic university and be 30 minutes late to a class which had a terrible professor who liked to lock the lecture hall's doors. Tardy students had to enter the hall by using the door adjacent the front of the room. And voila! Everyone's attention would be on tardy you.
• Enter the wrong class.
• Sit beside this guy who looked way too young to be in college and subsequently complain about the literally dilapidated classroom and bad ventilation... only to find out that said guy is actually your math instructor. (And he would laugh at you at the end of the term and say he'd never forget that one student (you) who had mistaken him as a classmate.)
• Physics.
• Fail a class. Not once. Not twice. Many times.

It was, admittedly, depressing.

My big sister was an achiever, and when I was in high school, everyone expected me to be one, too. I was cool with it. In fact, I enjoyed every achievement I'd had the most fortune to reach. That was why when I failed this one class on my freshman year in college, I couldn't cry.

I ripped myself off the right to, even when all I did was

I'd written this for my Facebook "graduation status": 

"From a hundred, my self-esteem plummeted to a negative. The only consolation I had for myself was the thought that I would get there; not soon, but eventually."

What got me through the 5 years of uncertainty.

It became depressing at the apartment. I was living with engineering students anyway (chemical and civil), and they, too, were having such hard times on their courses. Mid-semester was especially gloomy.

University, despite the big promise it has for the future, could literally ruin the self-esteem of its "prided" students. Somewhere along the way, we'd find ourselves just struggling to get up every morning and question what we were doing, anyway.

I got through 5 years of physics because of these people. And a lot more others.

_{Hazel @travelingmercies and Dana @zareceerine are both here on Steemit with their awesome photography and prose!}

We would stay awake 36 hours working on an instrumentation project together. We would study over night at each others' places or on other friends' places -- it didn't matter that we'd have to go out at nearly 12 midnight. We would sigh in relief when we pass together and celebrate by cooking good food (the cooking part was always only me).

We would struggle with Fourier transform, tunneling, electromagnetic waves, simulations, density functional theory... together. We would watch capacitors explode and ruin ICs and potentiometers. We would even fail together. Or feel just as sad on the failure of one of us.

What would get you through.

A support system. You can't do things alone. You can't handle your thoughts alone. Somehow, some way, there would always be the need (and want) to share everything that's on your head. 

Physics (college) is difficult. I would never forget the long hours I would spend inside my thesis adviser's office, discussing with her all problems I encountered. It would be tolerable when you have people you get to learn it with. (Well, it still really depends on what kind of student you are. LOL)

Then there's beyond college. After college. After all the hellish years. "It's a jungle out there," my big sister had said one time.

The five years I'd spent narrating about don't compare to the years still ahead of me (us). I just hope I can get through just all right.