Academic discipline of choice

[Murkrow]

Maths if anything, I'm quite interested in the pure side of it. Mainly because things you prove mathematically are proven forever, so unlike in most sciences, can't be disproved by some better theory. (assuming maths doesn't contradict itself anyway) I just love it when there's a puzzle or something, say those "slider" puzzles that you solve to form a picture, and with maths you can prove whether it's unsolvable without having to try it.

At the moment I'm thinking I'll like topology and various geometries the best, but we'll see when I go to uni.

 

[Blastoise Fortooate]

Zoology is fun! I like biology in general, I guess, but I prefer the larger-scale stuff, like animal behavior. Potassium pumps and vacuoles and mitochondria don't do it for me for some reason, though, which makes a lot of biology classes boring.

 

[Dinru]

Psychology and philosophy, particularly how they relate to each other, are my favorite things to study for fun. I also love programming computers <3

And writing.

 

[Dannichu]

ads;sofzhsha I LOVE SOCIOLOGY. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.
I annoy everybody in my life with my constant need to analyse everything in my life through a sociological lens.

Representation of gender! The effects of class segregation! The nature of racism! Is religion used as a method of supressing the working class, or for holding society together? Is society progressing towards equality or retrogressing to deeper divides? Are race and gender differences an expression of class divisions, or completely seperate inequalities? Should we attempt to explore the social world like we do the natural one? Are extremely qualitaitive research methods such as ethnographies as useful as questionnaires? To what extent can sociology help explain and prevent problems such as obesity or terrorism?

Oh my god, I could go on. I agree that other subjects are important and we need people to specialise in all fields for society to function (Durkheim! Division of labour! :D), but I can't imagine studying anything else.

 

[Michi]

In order of greatest interest to least:

- Astronomy
- Ancient Egyptian culture and mythology/religion.
- Mythology and ancient religions in general

The first especially. I have a bajillion astronomy books. I find the universe outside our atmosphere to be extremely beautiful, even though colors there are more dull in real life than illustrations. I love to read about how things like pulsars or black holes or nebulae work. It's such a broad and infinite topic I'll never run out of things to research. And that's really great for me because knowledge is very important to me.

I also have a great affinity for mathematics, but it's all memorization at my level. Mathematics are essential to everything that exists and existence itself, so it's still quite interesting.

I suppose abstract though interests me as well but how does one study that?

 

[Eloi]

I suppose abstract though interests me as well but how does one study that?

Platonicly? =D

 

[Rose]

I have three, history (especially East Asian History), arachnology, and multimedia.

I plan on doing biology and zoology, so I can later specialize in arachnology, and my mom hates it so much.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

I have no favourite, which is why it took me so long to settle on a degree to aim for. But I'm now 100% certain that I'm going to do a BA in Spanish and Philosophy with Creative Writing, so take from that what you will.

 

[H-land]

I find myself a very interdiciplinary sort of person.
However, I do have a few subjects I always seem to gravitate toward. For some reason, I find myself expressly interested in languages and linguistics (even when the "language" classes are more like "Français 204: La Gaule Était Divisée en Trois Parties" or "Español 203: Pablo Picasso y la Guerra Civil"), as and in sociology as well. I am, however, also typically interested in courses on music, and I've enough interest in computers and programming that I've declared a major in Computer Science.
I also have some sort of an interest in ecology, geography, geology, and climatology, but those have always wound up tieing in with just sociology and themselves, more often than not. (Frequently, I find myself creating fantasy worlds. And focusing too much on tectonics.)
Unfortunately for me, all my interests seem to collide rarely enough that I don't have time to study them all in school.

 

[Mhaladie]

I used to be interested in pretty much every subject ever and couldn't imagine deciding on one thing to study. And then I found my One True Love in physics. I guess I'd always thought physics ideas were interesting (like the rest of the world I was/am like "ahhhhh quantum mechanics seems soooooo cool", although I still know pretty much nothing about it), but when I took a properly mathematical physics class this past year, I really fell in love with it. The idea of describing how things actually work! With math! And getting a broader perspective on how things in the universe work, beyond human experience! Honestly, for me, you don't have to go out to modern physics where weird things happen for the ideas to be interesting. I mean, even electricity and magnetism (and some of Newtonian mechanics) have ideas that are surprising.

I just think physics is wonderful. And I'm going to be studying it at university next year. Physics and philosophy! <3 (Because philosophical ideas that have to do with physics, or that have to do with the same reasons I love physics, are my absolute favorite.)

Oh, and I love math, too. But I don't think I'm quite in love with it enough to put most of my time into it, although I definitely think it's excellent and want to learn more. Yay, I love hearing about people's favorite subjects. Everything is so cool.

 

[Zuu]

@linguistics,

i like seeing how languages have changed and are changing, mostly. thinking about what english will be like in the future fascinates me. i like seeing connections between sister languages and their predecessors. english is a fun language, since so much of our vocabulary is borrowed! i think it all started with learning latin, so there you go.

 

[Harlequin]

I'm a biologist. I love pretty much everything about it, even biochemistry (despite how often I complain about it). I want to do stuff with cells.

 

[Murkrow]

I used to be interested in pretty much every subject ever and couldn't imagine deciding on one thing to study. And then I found my One True Love in physics. I guess I'd always thought physics ideas were interesting (like the rest of the world I was/am like "ahhhhh quantum mechanics seems soooooo cool", although I still know pretty much nothing about it), but when I took a properly mathematical physics class this past year, I really fell in love with it. The idea of describing how things actually work! With math! And getting a broader perspective on how things in the universe work, beyond human experience! Honestly, for me, you don't have to go out to modern physics where weird things happen for the ideas to be interesting. I mean, even electricity and magnetism (and some of Newtonian mechanics) have ideas that are surprising.

I was originally planning to do physics. I'm not entirely sure why I decided on maths instead, but it was about a year to two years ago I decided. I do enjoy the physical applications of maths more than statistics and areas like that, though I do have trouble getting my head around electricity and magnetism.

Do you find you automatically understand a concept much much better once you actually think about what units a quantity uses actually means? For a while I mixed up magnetic flux and flux density, but then I think about how Wb = Tm^2 and it seems so obvious which is which.
Though sometimes it complicates things. I'm pretty confident I have at least a grasp on what a Tesla actually is, but then if I look at it as A^-1 kg s^-2, it just makes me even more confused :(

Is there any particular area of physics you're into at the moment?
I particularly like particle physics and relativity, although like all areas some aspects can get confusing. I'm not sure what my brother liked at first but towards the end of his master's he decided he wanted to do Astrophysics and now he's doing a PhD!

 

[surskitty]

Everything.

 

[RespectTheBlade]

I love studying science and math of any kind. I'm hoping to go into something in the field of physics or chemistry. I'd love to do astrophysics if possible, but to loosely quote brock's understury, I'm lightyears away from that. (I do understand a few basic things about it by watching several Science channel specials, but not much beyond that.)

 

[Chief Zackrai]

I enjoy pursuing any field that is musical, mechanical, or mathematical. I'm not sure why, but I like knowing how things work and why they work that way. Logic and structure that can be bent and recreated (in the cases of music and engineering) have always intrigued me. English is big too, for some reason.

 

[Glace]

I find myself mainly researching culture, history, and geography in different sovereign states. I, for one, would recognize Sealand as a country }:3 It's fun, I guess. At times, I also study astronomy, physics, aspects in law, and languages. Though usually I end up forgetting everything I learn in those departments. ._.

 

[Loffyglu]

History, definitely! Ancient history fascinates me, in particular, but I honestly really enjoy learning about all different aspects of it; how certain events happened, who played a part in them, why things turned out the way they did... ah, and culture, too; I'd really love to learn about how different cultures were formed and such~

And then I'm getting a sort of vague interest in politics; not that I know very much about it, just that it's beginning to intrigue me and I'd like to learn more about it. It's just hard to be able to find any unbiased source out there... |D;;

 

[Mhaladie]

Do you find you automatically understand a concept much much better once you actually think about what units a quantity uses actually means? For a while I mixed up magnetic flux and flux density, but then I think about how Wb = Tm^2 and it seems so obvious which is which.
Though sometimes it complicates things. I'm pretty confident I have at least a grasp on what a Tesla actually is, but then if I look at it as A^-1 kg s^-2, it just makes me even more confused :(

Is there any particular area of physics you're into at the moment?

Um! Well, embarrassingly, I didn't actually know off the top of my head what units "Wb" and "Tesla" were for... (Well, Tesla I remembered after a second, but I don't think I ever used the Weber, especially because flux is rarely a final result... in my experience.) I know, so bad, but I didn't often keep track of units, even though I have heard it helps! And it also doesn't help I didn't use the term "flux density", just magnetic field strength, so I'd have written phi = B*A... or the integral if you'd rather. Hurr. I'm silly.

But I do know what you mean, and even if I don't hold the actual names of units in my head, it is pretty much vital for me to keep track of all the quantities and how they relate to each other, yeah. I don't think I could understand concepts in any other way besides how they relate to other concepts! Although you're also right in that some connections are pretty lost. I mean, look at all the definitions for a Tesla! Maybe someone cleverer than me could see all those connections, but.

Favorite area of physics! Let's see, I don't feel I can speak for areas I haven't learned the math behind, but I'm quite excited to learn about relativity. And I'm also excited to properly learn about quantum ideas with the actual math! Really all the math behind the ideas makes them, for me. Beyond those... well, I guess those are just the basics, so I can't properly imagine what exactly goes on in astrophysics or particle physics! But I'm excited to learn everything, really. :D (As far as favorite thing I've done, definitely electricity and magnetism. It's weird at first to think you have these random particles with this thing, charge, and it makes one force just sitting around, and another force moving, but they're really part of the same thing and it's so strange! Although I'm with you on still having a bit of a hard time grasping it all.)

 

[Shiny Grimer]

O man, I wish I could just quote and respond to everyone here. :P

Psychiatry, especially personality disorders for some reason, and classical physics. Trying to get into modern physics, but finding it a bit difficult to enjoy.

Personality disorders are absolutely fascinating, aren't they? My interest in them might have something to do with the abnormally high number of people I know with personality disorders, but I've found them interesting before this discovery. And there is always the question of what is normal, what is not...

Maths if anything, I'm quite interested in the pure side of it. Mainly because things you prove mathematically are proven forever, so unlike in most sciences, can't be disproved by some better theory. (assuming maths doesn't contradict itself anyway) I just love it when there's a puzzle or something, say those "slider" puzzles that you solve to form a picture, and with maths you can prove whether it's unsolvable without having to try it.

Although math is not and has never been a passion or even interest of mine, I think pure math is the most interesting part of mathematics. The more applied a math is, the less interesting it is to me. :P I find statistics boring, for instance.

At the moment I'm thinking I'll like topology and various geometries the best, but we'll see when I go to uni.

Do you know what algebraic geometry involves? I've heard that it is the most difficult math, simply because it involves so many different disciplines.
Topology is the study of surfaces, right? All I know is apparently in topology, coffee is indistinguishable from a donut, or something like that.

I like linguistics and English literature, with a particular interest in Classical literature.

Will probably go and study for a degree in Classics :) Classics geeks = best geeks

You wouldn't happen to like philology, would you? I like that more than modern Chomsky type stuff.