Here's the news: I'm going back to college!

Now's the part where I explain my entire life story so you can
understand my decision. It all started in the fourth grade. I was
homeschooled, and my parents had these elementary math books 1-6, for
the corresponding grade. I was always good at doing math in my head,
and that's all you do in elementary school. Six whole years just to
learn how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Well, I could do all
that already. So, I went through the 5th and 6th grade books on my own
and solved every problem in them. It literally took like an hour a
piece for the books that I was supposed to be working from for a whole
year. My mother was impressed and thought I had prodigious math skills,
so, in 5th grade, she broke out the algebra book. This is where things
got messy. It was fine at first, but about halfway in, I just stopped
understanding stuff. We would get to places where I was expected to
memorize stuff, and I would stubbornly refuse because I didn't
understand it. My mom would give up trying to explain, my dad would
come to help, and he would yell at me to just do it a certain way, and
I would say "but WHY, I don't get it". And he would be like "just do
it" and I would sit there and stubbornly pretend that I didn't remember
how to solve the problem because I was so frustrated by not
understanding it that it felt overwhelming to just run through the
problems. The attempt to homeschool me in algebra was a fiasco, it
took about 2.5 years to get through the book, at some point they had
me just start over from the beginning, and I guess by 7th grade my
mind had matured enough that I was able to finish it. 8th grade
geometry was easy, 9th grade algebra 2 was even worse, so we gave up
halfway through the year, and in 10th grade they decided to sign me up
for an online algebra 2 class instead of attempting to teach it to me.
First semester of 11th grade I took precalculus at a community college.
I did well on this class, having a professional instructor and also 
just being older and more intelligent. Should not be a surprise that 
after all this trouble, I elected to not study calculus in high school,
instead enjoying my final 1.5 years with no math class. I did however
in 12th grade take a physics class at community college, in which I was
the only high school student, and also was better than everyone else in
the class, who were mainly bums. Despite enjoying my physics class (and
obtaining a very nice college letter of recommendation from the
professor), I was traumatized by my math experience, and never wanted
to take another math class again, so I chose to attend university as a
Spanish major, starting in Fall 2019. Near the end of the semester,
the time came to register for Spring classes, and my curiosity got the
better of me. I always considered myself to be intelligent, so I felt
kind of inadequate that everyone and their mother had taken AP Calculus
in high school, but I hadn't. And I was just curious what it was about.
So, despite not needing it for my degree, I registered for Calc I in 
the spring. This ended up being the most fun I had ever had in a 
college class. Dr. Belanger was amazing, he would go over everything 
from first principles, clearly explaining how you arrive at every 
formula before having us use it, and building up slowly to the harder 
concepts so that I left the lectures with total understanding. All the 
homework in this class was optional, and I never felt the need to do 
it. His lectures were so good that just following along with the 
example problems left me confident that I could do it on the exams, and 
indeed, I got an A on the class. During this semester, one of my close 
friends was talking about how he wanted to be rich. How his dad had 
money, and he was used to living in a household with resources, and he 
wouldn't enjoy his life if he were downwardly mobile. This friend has 
now graduated from a very good law school, I believe he is achieving 
his goal. I thought about his words carefully, and decided I too wanted 
to be successful, and knew I would not be pleased with whatever job you 
can get with a degree in Spanish. And since my calculus class was going
so well, I realized I had what it takes to succeed in the sciences, 
which is what I had always really been interested in. I switched my 
major to biology during the spring 2020 semester. Fall 2020 I was 
taking intro bio and chem, and I HATED my chemistry class. Not that I 
wasn't interested in the topic, but the whole class was memorization. 
And if you asked any in-depth questions about WHY reactions happen a 
certain way, or why orbitals are the way they are, the professor would 
wave it off and say "you need to take a quantum physics class to 
understand that". Well, I wanted to understand it. So, I decided to 
take a quantum physics class. The one problem is that, at Truman State 
University, the quantum physics class is the class with the most pre-
requisites of any in the whole school (tied with several other senior 
physics classes). You can't just register for it as a fun extra 
elective. So, I signed up for the majors physics 1 class in the spring, 
starting my physics career in my fourth semester at school. Calc 2 over 
the summer, physics 2 in fall of my junior year, and at this point it 
was going to basically take getting the degree anyway, so I just 
switched my major again to physics. At this point I was joining my 
fraternity Phi Sigma Kappa, and generally starting to have more of a 
social life in college, as it took me a few years to get comfortable 
and really have a lot of friends, which is typical for me. I'm sad to 
say that I became a poor student, due to my higher priority of hanging 
out with my friends and being chill asf every single day. I also had a 
very packed class schedule, since I only had 2.5 years from my first 
physics class until my graduation date, that is if I wanted to graduate
in only four years. I had scholarship that only counted for eight 
semesters, so I was determined to do this at first, but eventually I 
realized it was completely impossible due to class offerings, and 
resigned to a ninth semester. But while I was able to scrape by on 
being a poor student out of the classroom at first by paying close 
attention during lectures, it started to get out of hand in spring 
2023, my first semester taking senior level electives. To put it 
simply, the classes were too hard to pass without a dedicated effort. 
Sometimes I would start a homework set the night before it was due, and
end up staying up the whole night, just to not even finish it. Other 
times I would have homework due that I hadn't completed, and rather 
than going to my (very small student count) class, where it would be 
obvious I was the one who hadn't completed the homework, I would just 
skip, which made the problem worse. At the same time as this was 
happening, I was feeling very sickened about staying a ninth semester. 
People around me in the fraternity and adjacent social circles were 
dropping out left and right, failing classes, taking extra years in 
school, and I did not envy their lives. When I looked at students who 
had it together, passed all their classes, and followed a 4-year plan, 
I saw people who seamlessly transitioned into careers and successful 
adult lives. This was not the case for dropouts and people who 
struggled academically. I was seized by an immense feeling that I had 
to graduate that semester, or else I was setting my life off in the 
path of an unsuccessful person, rather than a successful one. Luckily 
for me, Truman had a Physics BA program, which allowed you to replace 
several of your upper-level electives with a learning plan of upper-
level classes in a different subject. As I had spent time as a biology 
major, I already met the requirements for a biology minor, which was an
acceptable learning plan. So, I was able to drop two of my classes and 
graduate that semester with a BA in Physics instead of a BS. There are 
many ways in which I am not pleased with the outcome of my education. I 
wish I could be a Physics student who had it all planned out. I started
too late. Most of my classmates started out as physics majors. They 
took calc in high school, and they were planning for grad school 
starting with their first day of undergrad. They did internships every 
summer, and research with professors. They maxxed out their involvement
in academic clubs and organizations. This was not me. I did nothing 
besides go to my classes and pass them. When it came time that my 
classmates were applying to grad school, I couldn't think of a single 
noteworthy thing to put on an application. Then there's also the fact 
that I didn't finish all the upper-level physics electives. I wouldn't 
even have felt comfortable starting grad school without the knowledge 
from those classes I skipped. The saddest part is that I never even 
took that Quantum Mechanics class, which was the whole reason I started
studying physics. I did learn what I had wanted to learn about electron
orbitals in other classes, but it still feels like an unsatisfying end.
I told myself that I couldn't handle more school, because I was 
becoming a worse student every semester, and if I had to do another 
semester I would probably never attend a single class and fail 
everything. And I decided I could always do a gap year and go to grad 
school later. Now I've had two gap years, and the jury is in: I should 
be doing a physics PhD right now. My job is good, but it is not 
intellectually stimulating in the way I need. School is what I enjoy,
and what I am good at. Unfortunately, the reasons I didn't even want
to apply to grad school still remain. I don't have a strong application
at all, and I don't want to bother doing a 2nd-rate program that would
accept me. I sat distraught about this for a while, thinking "why
couldn't I just have had it all figured out sooner, why can't I go back
in time and be a model physics student". Then I decided I would just
have to try my best to do exactly that. So, I am returning to undergrad
this fall at UMSL. I will be studying mathematics, as it's closely
related to physics enough that it will be extremely useful for me, and
I only need nine classes at UMSL to get a second bachelor's in math.
This leaves me plenty of room in the schedule to take all of the
physics electives that I feel I need to solidify my knowledge and be
prepared for graduate school. I plan to attend UMSL full-time for two
years. I will go in from day 1 with the goal of utilizing this time to
prepare a golden graduate school application. As I am a grown-up now,
and am so dedicated to my goal, I know that this time I will be more
motivated to devote myself to my studies. As UMSL is a bit of a
commuter school and I already have a social life in this city, it will
be easier for college to take the same place in my life as my current
full-time job. And this is a bit cocky, but as UMSL is in my opinion a
bit of a worse school than Truman was, I believe it should be possible
for me to be a standout student and catch the approval of professors,
which is important for my goals. I registered for my classes on Friday,
I will be taking a computer programming class, linear algebra, a math
class called Complex Analysis (nervous about this), a slop gen ed
writing class that UMSL requires to graduate, and most excitingly,
Intro to Quantum Mechanics, that class I wanted to take so badly that
it started my physics career. I've been spending every spare moment
reviewing things I learned before. Once I started taking upper level
physics courses at Truman, I made sure to purchase physical copies of
all my textbooks instead of renting them, because I saw professors with
big book collections, and I figured I would find them useful to have in
the future. Today is the future, I'm very glad I have them. This is
one of those decisions that I've been toying with for ages, but once I
actually decided to go for it, it became so clear that it's the right
choice. Now that I've gotten used to the idea of doing it, the thought
of changing my mind and continuing to just work my job through fall is 
sickening. My heart is very set on this. Manifesting today that in the 
fall of 2027, I will be beginning a physics PhD.